If I recall correctly, I first saw the Maysles Brothers documentary Grey Gardens on VHS in the early 1990s, and like every generation encountering the pop culture artifacts of a previous generation for the very first time, I thought I’d stumbled across some rare find that only a handful of lucky people knew about (in the same way Columbus thought he’d discovered America, several million resident natives notwithstanding).
Having missed the first wave of Grey Gardens mania in 1975, I was surprised when my “secret” documentary suddenly became a Broadway musical in 2006, indicating a much larger fan base for the Maysles’ film (and its subjects) than I’d previously suspected -- so later, when I heard Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore were taking on the roles of Jackie O’s eccentric relatives Big & Little Edie in a (relatively) big budget HBO biopic, I already knew the cats (and raccoons) were pretty much out of the bag.
There are three separate audiences for the HBO film: fans of the original documentary, superfans who also caught the Broadway musical, and newcomers who don’t yet know the strange but true story of “Big” Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter, “Little” Edith Bouvier Beale, two colorful odd ducks from a privileged background who wound up living in the hideous squalor of a crumbling, critter-infested mansion in East Hampton, New York until they were rescued, in different ways, from poverty, encroaching madness (and, one suspects, rabies) by (A) the Suffolk County Health Department, who threatened to condemn their home, thus generating National Enquirer and New York magazine stories that brought their plight to the attention of (B) Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who paid to upgrade their living conditions and (C) the Maysles Brothers, who became aware of the Beales thanks to the ensuing publicity (and also their work on a documentary about the Bouviers which they wisely ditched so they could make Grey Gardens instead). The story is so bizarre, I can see newcomers being somewhat baffled at first by the HBO film -- and then slowly seduced by the warm, funny and vividly dysfunctional central relationship, not to mention the Emmy (and, frankly, Oscar) worthy performances by Lange (buried beneath old age prosthetics that somehow counteract her late-career Botox, thus enabling the actress’ best and most expressive performance in years) and a radiant Barrymore, acting the shit out of the hands-down best role of her career.
Superfans loyal to the original documentary and/or the stage version (featuring Christine Ebersole’s Tony-winning Broadway performance as Little Edie) may pooh-pooh the new pay cable incarnation -- and I don’t want to oversell what is basically just a very good HBO Original Movie -- but as a fan with fond memories of the Maysles film, yet only a vague sense of the history surrounding it, I was fascinated to watch Michael Sucsy’s biopic fill in the gaps, chronicling the events that led two beautiful, independent women into such co-dependent desperation.
Viewers who snickered at the original Grey Gardens as nothing more than a freak show (or condescendingly tut-tutted it as exploitation) may be surprised by the biopic’s depiction of the Beales as smart women trapped in the wrong decade and social circle, with few options worthy of their outsized aspirations. Lange’s Big Edie has nothing of her own but the house she clings to with ferocious, to-hell-with-the-world tenacity, and Barrymore’s Little Edie is heartbreaking as a fragile firecracker of potential unable to escape her mother’s orbit simply because she can’t find anyone else to recognize what a S-T-A-U-N-C-H character she truly is. For all the disappointments and deprivations we see the Beales suffer, what got my waterworks flowing (and makes this one of my favorite films of the year so far) is the moment when the two proud, neglected women finally find someone to listen to their story.
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