Mystical Optimism

Life may be what you make of it, even if it never becomes what you want it to be. But you try. You have to try even if you wind up wondering, was that really my life? It’s hard to understand just about anything sometimes. Released in September 1996, Allison Anders’ GRACE OF MY HEART was never a big hit but it’s lingered in the memory like a favorite song that only a few other people seem to know about. Lovingly crafted, it’s a film that contains a certain amount of messiness but more often than not it’s the endearing kind, the sort of messiness that seems pure, almost like going through the clutter of your own memories as you try to sort out exactly how certain things happened over the course of time. Willing to embrace the melodrama, the film is completely heartfelt and sincere about itself so its portrayal of how the simple act of creativity can really truly matter to a person rings genuine. And even more than that it contains a lead performance by Illeana Douglas that is so raw and powerful it transforms everything about the film around her. It’s not just a film but a searing melody coming from the soul of her screen presence and it makes the film something it wouldn’t have come anywhere close to otherwise. The events in GRACE OF MY HEART matter just like the events of your own life matter, the regrets that are portrayed leave a mark and it avoids breezy nostalgia of the eras it depicts in favor of something deeper. It portrays a life where true creative expression is the ultimate good as we try to figure out what kind of life we’re living while we fight our way through it all.

Illeana Douglas writes about the making of GRACE OF MY HEART in her new memoir, the highly recommended I BLAME DENNIS HOPPER and it’s only one of the many stories she has to tell. She writes about the challenge of working with Robert De Niro on the remake of CAPE FEAR, going days without eating while filming ALIVE and the freedom Gus Van Sant gave her during the making of TO DIE FOR. But she also talks about her childhood, the background of which explains the book’s title, along with her early days of discovering movies at the drive-in as well as deeply affecting recollections of her relationship with grandfather Melvyn Douglas including her formative experience visiting him on the set of his late-career triumph in Hal Ashby’s BEING THERE, the film that won him his second Oscar, where she also had a memorable encounter with the film's star Peter Sellers. This turned about to be one of only several meaningful and often fortuitous brushes with legendary figures in her life that she details including an unfortunate phone call with Billy Wilder (who at another point she correctly refers to as God), a lasting friendship with Roddy McDowall and an unexpected run-in with a presumably hungover Lee Marvin on a New York sidewalk early one morning. She also discusses her own passion for movies and why they mean so much to her, how that connection helped transform her into who she ultimately became and it’s a beautiful, funny, inspiring read, one of the best such books in a very long time. It’s a must for anyone who loves films and a reminder of why they can mean so much as we watch them so obsessively. Her book is a connection to GRACE OF MY HEART as well, it deepens how much the film clearly meant to those who made it, a film in which you can feel the undeniable yearning of its lead character just as you can feel the yearning of Illeana Douglas in the stories she tells about her own life. “I don’t have a song in me,” declares the lead character she plays in the film at a crucial stage, just before writing the ultimate song within her. Sometimes the very thought that we don’t have any songs left in us is the most frightening thing of all.

In the late 50s, steel heiress Edna Buxton (Illeana Douglas) uses an impulse choice during a music competition to sing a song that allows her to win the contest, throwing her into the New York world of hustling for success as a singer and songwriter. With no one looking for girl singers anymore, Edna hooks up with Brill Building producer Joel Milner (John Turturro) who wants her solely for her writing talent and changes her name to the more enticing “Denise Waverly”. As her success as a songwriter grows she begins to take more chances with her work and meets the more socially minded songwriter Howard Cazatt (Eric Stoltz) who she teams up with. The relationship soon turns into a marriage with a baby and as the 60s press forward with the music business changing with Denise meeting famed California rocker Jay Phillips (Matt Dillon) as she records her most personal song ever. But when her relationship with Jay sweeps her away into a new life far away from New York, Denise begins to lose track of the creativity she was once so passionate about.

It can be argued that GRACE OF MY HEART tries to cover too much ground, tries to hit too many highlights of the decade as things move from early 60s Brill Building to late 60s Malibu and beyond. However much it can be seen as an accurate depiction of the setting and period, the film manages to transcend such concerns by knowing to focus on the story of Denise Waverly as things rapidly change around her. “You can be dramatic as long as it’s truthful,” the lead character declares at one point and GRACE OF MY HEART achieves a mixture of being a film which not only displays a love for the music but also for the act of creating that music. Writer-director Allison Anders brings to the material both a sensitivity and excitement, showing how creativity can come from what appears around us as well as the yearning we feel inside. It’s a film that loves the people in its world, just as Anders seems to love placing Illeana Douglas up against her co-stars in the frame so they can play off each other and the result becomes hopeful, sad and raw all at once.

There’s an undeniable energy through much of the film and it feels as excited to explore this world of jazz clubs and recording studios through Denise Waverly’s eyes with an optimism coming from its portrayal of her, a lead character with two names from two worlds trying to find herself in this world even when she’s told by someone that she doesn’t have that ‘grace’. Instead of trying to make it an all-encompassing look at the period the film sees the magic in simply letting some of the songs play out as the lives are lead and the characters discover them for the first time so we share their pleasure in creating them, knowing they’ve discovered something special. The recreations of that era’s sound capture part of the soul of that music without sounding like spoofs or hollow tributes—fitting for the movie, all the songs seem to share the inescapable feel of yearning—and the introduction of Denise Waverly’s own personal anthem “God Give Me Strength” (a collaboration between Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello) when Matt Dillon’s Jay Phillips enters the story turns what seems to be a minor moment at first into an absolutely shattering sequence, of a connection that suddenly develops from an unexpected glance between two people. The scene as it turns out is powerful, such an exhalation of all the themes that have developed up until then that the movie peaks and there’s almost nowhere else dramatically to go from this private triumph.

It’s moments like that which stay with you in GRACE OF MY HEART even without Illeana Douglas doing her own singing which has always played like the biggest flaw in the entire running time, as if we’re being deprived of a crucial nerve in the film’s bloodstream. Maybe it’s a case where certain scenes, even specific moments, are better than all the connective tissue so the end result plays a little like we’re seeing extremely tantalizing sections of a much longer story. Coming in at a few minutes under two hours some holes can be felt and there is the feel that it’s maybe trying to cover too much ground (of course, one’s reach should exceed their grasp and all that…) so when it becomes clear that the Brill Building section is ending it’s hard not to think that we’re watching the final episode of a long-running series about New York songwriters in the 60s that we never got to see every episode of (there’s a thought—Denise Waverly running into Don Draper in a bar late some night in ’63). It’s like the film we’re gotten attached to has ended without warning and is suddenly restarting which becomes frustrating—the transition is almost too abbreviated, the rhythm doesn’t feel quite right and races to the tragedy almost too fast. Every now and then a moment that sticks out where it feels too rushed or how maybe the film is trying a little too hard for period detail, just like how it’s not really Douglas’ voice singing, it’s as if the movie comes within reach of the greatness being portrayed in the “God Give Me Strength” number but falls just short. Deleted scenes on the DVD may have fleshed some elements out that feel slightly hanging in the release version—executive producer Martin Scorsese’s regular editor Thelma Schoonmaker worked on this film and you can feel the tightness at times particularly when the pacing rushes through an affair with Bruce Davison’s disc jockey so fast that it barely seems to qualify as a relationship but even this manages to make sense in the film’s collage-like approach. Sometimes the people you haven’t spent that much time with fuck you up the most, after all.

But GRACE OF MY HEART’s awareness of itself is important as is the emotion is displays. It matters just as much as the conscious echoes of other films, particularly A STAR IS BORN (presumably the 1954) and the obvious real-life inspirations whether Carol King, Lesley Gore or Brian Wilson. Several of the actors makes hard not to connect it to other films as well, intentional or not, whether Patsy Kensit providing a connection to Julian Temple’s 50s-set rock musical ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS, Matt Dillon playing a California rocker just like his brother Kevin did in Oliver Stone’s THE DOORS and even an appearance by David Clennon provides a direct link to BEING THERE, the film Illeana Douglas once visited her grandfather on the set of and which in her book she writes about how it has continued to turn up in her life unexpectedly. And the awareness is also revealed in how Jay tries to talk Denise into making an album that can be ‘more personal’ because she’s a woman and it feels like that’s what the movie is as well. The film is unafraid of any sensitivity, showing how Denise has to overcome how the industry doesn’t want girl singers, fighting to get a song to tell a girl’s story since it’s not about the guy and even the touch of casual sexism tossed into some dialogue. Douglas stresses in her book that part of the goal was to make a woman’s picture and it’s correctly unapologetic about that. One shot of Douglas and Dillon embracing late in the film stuck out to my on a recent viewing as I realized how long it went on and how insistent the moment seemed to become about their closeness. It’s easy to imagine that most directors wouldn’t have lingered on the shot as long as Anders does, to stress the yearning in that moment, a reminder that for all of the references to other things and people all swirling around it the film is sometimes about nothing more than reaching for that person in front of you, hoping that moment will last and knowing it can’t. The yearning cuts deep and stays with me, just as some of the lyrics in “God Give Me Strength” that play in my head over and over again as I do my best to forget some of the past.

But even more than that is Illeana Douglas since there is no film without her, she is the film just as much as anything that Allison Anders brings to it and the way the director uses her is a reminder of that. You fall for her instantly and in scene after scene she keeps giving you reasons to fall for her even harder. Every moment coming from her huge eyes means something, every time she breaks out into a huge smile means that much more, every time she brings an unexpected laugh to a scene means that much more. You fall in love with her very presence just as you know that most of the men in Denise Waverly’s life aren’t worthy of her either—I’ve seen the film enough by now that I’m certain Eric Stoltz’s Howard doesn’t deserve her even as I can’t decide if that’s my reaction to the character or Stoltz’ deliberately unlikable performance. Some of the best supporting work comes from the people in the margins – I almost referred to one actor in the film as ‘underappreciated’ but the truth is the film is filled with underappreciated people with lots of interesting faces in small roles and some pertinent cameos particularly Jennifer Leigh Warren, Bridget Fonda, Chris Isaak, Lucinda Jenney and Richard Schiff (ask me my story about Schiff and his appearance in this film sometime).

The unexpectedly fragile innocence Matt Dillon projects as Jay Phillips becomes sadder to me each time I see the film and Patsy Kensit is particularly good as the foil for Douglas after the characters’ initial coolness towards each other; you can feel the friendship clicking in their scenes together, their rapport feels totally genuine. Maybe best of all aside from the lead performance, John Turturro is particularly memorable as the Phil Spector-like producer (fortunately the real Phil Spector is actually referenced so we don’t have to worry about that possible future for the character) coming off as appropriately larger than life but always grounded—considering how big he plays it, I’m not sure Turturro has ever seemed as relaxed and as natural as he does in this film. What develops onscreen between Douglas and Turturro becomes the real chemistry of the film which pays off when he returns near the end for a dynamite prolonged confrontation scene done entirely in one shot, the film’s own version of Tommy Noonan yelling at Judy Garland near the end of A STAR IS BORN. Of course, Illeana Douglas channeling Judy Garland makes you think of Liza Minnelli in Scorsese’s NEW YORK NEW YORK which not only adds to the mirrors in this context, it’s a reminder that in the incarnation of the oft-told showbiz story we’re being told here Illeana Douglas surpasses each of them, earning a beautifully haunting final shot in which every conceivable emotion that’s been building up over the past two hours washes over her face and it’s nothing less than a triumph.

Sometimes, in the blink of an eye, things in life suddenly become clear. But too often that clarity goes away as fast as it turned up. That’s what you reflect on at the end of the year, I suppose, when you can’t stop dwelling on what went wrong. In her book I BLAME DENNIS HOPPER, Illeana Douglas writes about how GRACE OF MY HEART has endured in some unexplainable way, that people have taken it to heart no doubt because they see something of themselves in her journey. It’s a reminder of the things you need to strive for, that you can’t let them just fade away as the years go on no matter what happens. You need to hang onto that as much as possible if it’s what you feel deep down. And you still need to find out who you are, what your life is and whether or not you can find the strength, as well as the grace, to move on in this world.