It has been well-documented that after the filming of 1977's Julia, Jane Fonda had sought to cast co-star Meryl Streep in her upcoming Vietnam War drama, Coming Home. Fonda was evidently so impressed with Streep that she had her in mind for the role of Vi Munson, originally portrayed by Penelope Milford. Meryl proved unavailable, and Milford went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for her performance. I had originally assumed that Meryl might have been too busy shooting The Deer Hunter (also 1978). As it turns out, however, Coming Home was filmed in early 1977 (The Deer Hunter mostly the latter half), but Meryl was committed to starring in a Tennessee Williams play.
At first I was hesitant about choosing another Vietnam War-related movie to recast with Meryl, especially the exact year as The Deer Hunter. But it has been so long since I'd seen Coming Home that I'd forgotten how polar opposite the role of Vi is from Linda. It therefore seemed like a great choice to imagine Meryl diverging from the hapless, innocent, "waiting" Linda in The Deer Hunter to free-spirited, pot-smoking bohemian Vi in Coming Home.
Vi meets Fonda's character, Sally, after both women's partners (Sally's husband, Vi's boyfriend) are deployed to Vietnam in 1968. To keep herself busy, Sally volunteers at the veterans hospital where Vi works, and she ends up developing a relationship with Luke (John Voigt), who is paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair following a combat injury. Vi also has a brother (Robert Carradine) who lives at the hospital, struggling emotionally after a brief stint in Vietnam as well. There isn't much out there in terms of clips of Milford in the role, but I found this one that has a few snippets from several scenes (start at 1:28):
I think it would've been fun to see Meryl play the scene where's she with Fonda after learning that her brother committed suicide in the hospital. Vi is the opposite of naive, and she's the type of character who seems like she'd have a pragmatic view of it all in the end. That doesn't mean she's not angry or sad, but she's not shattered or helpless. She's a good lens through which the audience can understand another facet of the horrors of war; her brother spent little time overseas, yet came back so messed up that he ended up taking his life. Vi behaves like a ticked off older sister who's little brother pulled some kind of stupid stunt. Her pain no doubt goes much deeper, but her tough exterior won't let that show just yet.
Directed by Hal Ashby, Coming Home was a tremendously successful film, both commercially and critically. It was also one of the few to realistically depict the life and struggles of someone wheelchair-bound--particularly in love scenes. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards in total, winning three: Original Screenplay, and both Fonda and Voigt for their lead performances. Had Meryl not done that play, it would've been interesting to see for which film she would've been nominated, as it's an Academy rule that an actor cannot be recognized in the same category twice.
From as early as I can remember, every spring around Easter, a network TV station would air the sweeping Franco Zeffirelli miniseries, Jesus of Nazareth. I'd been brought up Roman Catholic, and the life of Jesus Christ was a ubiquitous story in the small world of my rural hometown, my school, and family. Released in 1977 (at Easter), I'm convinced the production helped shape my ideas on what life might have been like for those living at the start of the Common Era. We'll get to how innaccuate that likely was in reality a bit later, but suffice it to say, that the series transported me into a world that blended the historical with the supernaturual in a way that to this day seems expertly done. I'll mention that I'm a total heathen now (I don't believe there is a divine being overseeing the universe, much less that it's some dude who lived and was excecuted in modern-day Israel 2000 years ago) and have been for some time. So I have very little trouble delineating the fantasy of the biblical story of Jesus of Nazareth from the way it was so realistically portrayed in Zeffirelli's work.
I'm not going to go into the plot. Even non-believers likely have a general idea that Jesus was born, crucified, buried and allegedly rose on the third day. The story pretty much follows all that from a biblical point of view, with a fair amount of background involving the political and religious conflicts at the time. The whole series is a whopping six hours (about a half hour longer than 2003's Angels in America, for reference). It still sort of boggles me the scope with which this project was undertaken and the high-wattage ensemble cast that Zeffirelli was able to assemble for TV. Anne Bancroft, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Ernest Borgnine, James Earl Jones, Anthony Quinn, Rod Steiger, Peter Ustinov. Eight eventual Oscar winners in total, among other brilliant actors.
Whom did I have in mind for Meryl in this project then? No other than Mary, the mother of Jesus, of course. Originally portrayed by Brit Olivia Hussey (who had been Zeffirelli's Juliet in 1968's Romeo and Juliet), the actor needed to realistically be able to portray someone from age 17 to 50. Hussey, who would've been 24 at the time of shooting, is just shy of two years younger than Meryl. So if she was able to pull it off, I suspect Meryl would've had little problem with it as well. I actually rewatched the whole series in recent months. And I have to admit, there was a little more to do in the character of Mary than I had remembered. Not unlike themes in Colm Tóibín's novella, The Testament of Mary, we can almost get a sense in some earlier scenes, when an adolescent Jesus reads scripture to rabbis, that there's a hint of uncertainty in Mary's eyes about what her son's "attributes" may mean for him as he ages into adulthood. Starting at 2:46, it's a pretty intense scene for the character.
Streep likely would've gotten a fair amount of attention after acting in something like this. Knowing that Zeffirelli cast Hussey, like many of the other actors in this production, after having worked with her on an earlier project, it's unlikely that Meryl came close to auditioning for this part, much less getting cast. But it's the kind of project she would've been on people's radars for around the time. After all, she starred in and won an Emmy for the CBS miniseries Holocaust only a year after this. And she could've used the same black wig she wore in her actual 1977 project, Julia, for Jesus of Nazareth insteadha:
There's no way this series would get cast the same way today. While there is a fair amount of diversity in the original, the majority of the main characters are played by white people. And not just like not brown or black, like paralyzingly blue-eyed Jesus:
While I'm certainly not in favor of casting white folks in roles for people that would definitely not have been white, the idea of Jesus Christ being a god who performs miracles and rises from the dead essentially moves the story out the realm of a pure preiod piece and one with elements of, to me, fantasy and mysticism. Put another way, the Bible is fiction. That being said, people did not look like this in first-century Jerusalem, fiction or non-fiction. At the time Jesus of Nazareth was made, the propagation of the image of Christ as someone who looked like he was born in Scandinavia had been very successfully orchestrated and carried out with multiple cultural and artistic depictions as such. It's perpetuated to this day, if perhaps with better knowledge and recognition of how inaccurate it really is. I've read that Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino were originally considered for the role of Jesus, but even they were passed over in favor of Robert Powell, who was eventually cast, due to Powell's image more closely matching the "popular percetion of Jesus held by the American public." Yikes.
The project received praise from critics and was a massive hit around the world. It's a bit perplexing to me that it didn't get more award recognition in the United States (only two Emmy nominations). It did much better with BAFTA (it was a British/Italian production), with six nominations (winning none). I tend to wonder if, despite the high quality of the production and excellent performances from the star cast, if it was a bit too obvious and "known" as a story. It had almost a documentary feel to it, which I have to admit is one of the more appealing aspects of it for me. Regardless, it's fun to imagine Meryl having been part of something so epic and memorable from my childhood!
We begin the "supporting" version of this recasting project in the same year we did for lead. Mery's actual filmography began with 1977's Julia. But we know that she was doing auditions for films earlier, as she's famously described her encounter with Dino De Laurentis in her audition for King Kong. That film was ultimately cast with Jessica Lange, and was released in December 1976. So it's not too wild to assume she may have not only been interested in doing a film a year earlier than she did, but was getting auditions with established directors.
One of those directors could've been John Schlesinger, whose Midnight Cowboy had scored him an Academy Award for Best Director earlier that decade. Schlesinger reteamed with Dustin Hoffman in 1976 for an adaptation of William Goldman's thriller novel, Marathon Man. I'll say right off the bat that it's a bit of a stretch to think that Streep would've been considered for the role of a French and German-speaking Swiss woman for her first film. That being said, it's known that Schlesinger originally envisioned Julie Christie (a Brit) in the part of Elsa Opel that eventually went to Swiss actress, Marthe Keller. It's not a huge role and Keller was by no means a big star in Hollywood, but had up to that point appeared in several French and German films. Had Meryl secured an audition, we can expect that she would've been able to adeptly display her knack for accents and language, perhaps even to the point of being considered. We'll continue under that premise.
The film basically follows Babe Levy (Hoffman), a Ph.D. student and jogger, whose brother, Doc (Roy Scheider) is a secret agent for the U.S. government, acting as a diamond courier for a Nazi war criminal, Dr. Szell (played by Laurence Oliver), in exchange for information in tracking down other Nazis. The plot is pretty convoluted, so suffice it to say that Elsa is also an agent secretly working for Dr. Szell. She becomes Babe's girlfriend to get info on Doc, whom Szell is now trying to kill because he feels he can no longer trust anyone with the diamonds.
Doc tricks Elsa here into revealing that she's not really from where she says she is. Beyond the technical aspects of the language, it would be an interesting character from the angle of Elsa essentially being a role within a role. The majority of her time on screen is her "acting" like someone she is not. I suspect that would be both a challenging and fun prospect to negotiate for an actor. We never know for sure whether or not Elsa ever had true feelings for Babe. Or if perhaps she didn't at first or hadn't expected to when he was her "mark," but developed them as they spent time together. Spoiler: She ends up getting herself killed when she warns Babe toward the end that double agent Janeway is going to betray him. So we're left to believe, to some degree, that she really did care, since she put her life at risk to help Babe. One further point to mention here: Keller shows her top during a love scene with Hoffman. Hoffman does show his bare ass in a different scene, so it's not like it's only the woman who's showing some skin in the film. But I do wonder if that would've been a deal-breaker for Meryl at the time. She flashed one breast in a scene during Silkwood in 1983, so maybe it wouldn't have been too big of a deal. It would certainly not have hurt the film's quality had the nude scene been left out in Marathon Man.
The film did rather well with critics. I've watched it a couple times now, and I agree that it's a solid film, if a bit difficult to follow from a plot standpoint. It's also not something to watch if you're squeamish, as there's a "dental" torture scene that is enough to make you want to consider forgoing your next scheduled cleaning. Olivier deservedly earned an Oscar nomination for his supporting role as Szell. It earned five overall nominations at the Golden Globes, including one for Keller in Supporting Actress. Keller also received a Bambi Award, a German award recognizing excellence in international media. The film is definitely worth taking the time to view.
In the early months of the pandemic, I began a Streep recasting project that spanned over forty years of movies. With one selection for each calendar year, I meant it to be a realistic sort of alternative or parallel career Meryl could've feasibly had, were she not to have done the movies of her actual filmography. This is not to be confused of course with my "reimagined filmography," which more reimagines what her career could've looked like if a handful of additions and subtractions were made to canon (the additions being roles for which she was at least obliquely connected to but never starred in, the subtractions being either stinkers or movies I just didn't really care if she'd never been in)--a sort of best-case-scenario look back of what wasn't wildly unrealistic had the chips fallen slightly differently over the years. The recasting project required no such connection to the films' casting histories. In fact, for only a handful of my recasting choices could I find information that she was in consideration. That difference was part of the fun.
With the exception of two selections early on, all of the recasting choices were lead roles. It didn't seem super realistic to put her in high-profile leading lady projects when she would've been a total newcomer. We're coming up on a year since i finished that project last summer. I had indicated at the time that I expected to do a second iteration of the project, but this time with only supporting roles. Well, there's no better time than the present! I've had the entire list of which projects I plan to select complete for many months now (save one or two recent changes). It's been fun rewatching many of them to refresh my memory on the performances/characters. A few were projects that I'd never seen, but knew enough about that they intrigued me as potentially interesting roles.
Similar to the original recating project (and Meryl's actual career in general), I made an effort to make selections that cover rather broad territory. Perhaps my favorite thing about watching Meryl is the wide variety of people we get to witness her inhabiting. With that in mind, not only did I attempt to choose roles that would provide an opportunity for interpreting a unique character, but also some projects specifically because of when or where the story takes place, by whom they were directed, and with whom she would get to co-star. Sometimes it's a bit of a combo of all these. And at the same time, they're often choices that are simply personal favorites, within the confines of my "guidelines" of course. As a result, some of the selections might seem a little wacky or unexpected (ranging from glorified cameos to borderline lead performances). But I assure you, they'll never be boring.
Folks have made their choices for which film of Meryl's they feel should have been nominated for Best Picture, and was not. The results are as follows:
Doubt 29.55%
Silkwood 20.45%
Sophie's Choice 18.18%
The Devil Wears Prada 13.64%
The Bridges of Madison County 11.36%
Adaptation 6.82%
August: Osage County 0%
Into the Woods 0%
I can't really argue with Doubt. I think it's a great movie and regularly revisit it. I definitely would've ranked it ahead of both The Reader and Frost/Nixon that year. I'm a little surprised by how low Adaptation came in. I voted for it, just because of all the films of Meryl's that were not nominated for Best Picture, this might be the best, in my opinion. But when trying to decide which film I would push out of the top five that year. Maybe The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. As much as I enjoy Chicago, Adaptation is probably the superior film as well.
Good to see that Silkwood and Sophie's Choice were up there at the top as well. Those also just happen to be two of Streep's likely top five performances in my view, with Sophie's Choice number one.
This question was suggested in the comments of my last poll, and I thought it would be a great one to consider. It's interesting that Meryl has been in three films in the last five years that were nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards (The Post, Little Women, Don't Look Up). She was of course only nominated for The Post. She hadn't been nominated for a film that also had a Best Picture nom since way back in 1985 (Out of Africa)!
I think it's means something extra when a lead actor or even supporting actor gets individually recognized for their performance in a film that's nominated for the top prize. So often Meryl is the best thing in her films, and she can make, what would otherwise be a bit of a stinker perhaps (see The Iron Lady, for example), a decent film due simply to the fact that she's so good and on screen all the time.
So with that in mind, which film(s) do you think were deserving of that top nomination?
This will be the last (for a while, at least) of several recent novel suggestions I've suggested could make great adaptations for Meryl. Stephanie Kallos' 's debut 2005 novel, Broken for You seems a tale ripe for a limited series. I say that because it's a reasonably long book, which would give ample story to cover six to eight episodes.
One of the two main characters is Margaret Hughes, a 70-something wealthy divorcée living alone in a mansion in Seattle. Spoilers ahead. She's gotten a diagnosis of brain cancer and ends up taking in a boarder, Wanda Schultz, a young woman who's sort of obsessively trying to track down her ex boyfriend. The two develop a friendship which ends up changing them both in profound, but different ways.
Margaret houses countless expensive antiques, which turn out to be items that were taken from Jewish families during WWII by Margaret's businessman father. Despite her many attempts to locate the owners of all the antiques, she's been unsuccessful, and harbors strong guilt around possessing them. Wanda is employed in the theater and has an artistic background. Events unfold where she ends up making enormous mosaic artworks out of the antique items, which get a lot of attention from the press...mostly very good, some controversial. But it ends up being a way for Wanda to work through the pain of parental and partner abandonment, and for Margaret to somehow do right by the families she's been unable to reach. Fun connection at the end is that Wanda's father, who'd left when she was a child to search for her mother, ends up befriending an old Jewish lady who possessed a small item that was part of an antique set in Margaret's possession. He ends up getting connected with Margaret after his friend dies and leaves the antique to him, and of course, he and Wanda get reunited.
I thought it was a pretty good book with nicely drawn-out characters. Margaret and Wanda definitely feel like co-leads if they were to be portrayed similarly to the way they were in the book. It may seem a bit "been there done that" when one reads that the would-be Meryl character is suffering from cancer, but I'd argue it's not quite the same way we've seen from her before in the case of One True Thing, for example. I think the people you have around you, what you leave behind, and what secrets or regrets you may have greatly shapes people's experiences and approaches when faced with the real possibility of death. Margaret is in a very different position than Kate Gulden. And while not a mother (anymore--additional background that her son died tragically quite young), the stakes are perhaps higher in her their own, unique way.
I suppose the story could work as a feature film as well. I just tend to think longer books with a lot of moving parts that span decades of experience are so often better suited for a limited series. The medium is a much more respected and highly-financed option that even fifteen years ago, and it also provides more time for us to enjoy our favorites onscreen.
We (and Meryl, more importantly) have options out there, people! On this blog I've suggested adaptations of The Testament of Mary, The Buried Giant, Without Blood, The Cypress Club, State of Terror, State of Wonder, Celine, All Adults Here, and Broken for You. A couple have been optioned, non have been casted. With no official news on any upcoming filming projects, how fun would it be if one of her next came from the above list?
