STREEPS OF FIRE: DID SHE OR DIDN'T STREEP?

The Good, The Pod and The Ugly

Send us a Text Message.

STREEPS OF FIRE: STILL OF THE NIGHT and A CRY IN THE DARK/EVIL ANGELS

Join Ken, Jack, Thomas and Andi for two very important pieces in the Streep mosaic.
Streep in the 1980s was a marvel of A-list perfection, starring in drama after drama, garnering awards like crazy and generally gathering a reputation as a highbrow accent technician. This week we start with the last movie Streep made before ascending to the A-list as the finest actress of her generation, 1982's STILL OF THE NIGHT, which came out months before SOPHIE'S CHOICE. Reuniting with Robert Benton, who directed Streep to her first Oscar in Kramer vs. Kramer, Night is a clear Hitchcock pastiche/homage with Roy Scheider as a shrink who gets in over his head with the mistress of a dead patient, played by Streep, who may be a murder. As we learn in the episode, Streep was not a fan of the genre or the movie itself, doing it mostly on the fumes of her wonderful experience on Kramer (even replicating getting to write her character's monologue late in the film, like her courtroom speech in Kramer). After Sophie's Choice Streep would star in a string of dramas, until...
1988's A CRY IN THE DARK/EVIL ANGELS, the infamous Australian true story of a woman who claimed a dingo ate her baby and started off a public and social firestorm that still resonates today. This is a fine movie and a bookend with Still of the Night as Streep would purposely go on after this to broaden her reputation with comedies and, years later, even action movies. It's not that Dark's failure at the box office (not because it isn't good) but she was in a rut and becoming typecast in somber dramas. The next 4 years would see her in She-Devil, Postcards From The Edge, Defending Your Life and Death Becomes Her, a string of very purposeful comedies (of varying degrees of success). Streep's turn from A-list Drama Lady to comedienne after A Cry in the Dark was remarkable at the time and still is today. Streep knew what she needed and went for it. Note: Wed do explain the two titles for this film in the podcast.
THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: [e-mail]
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
Instagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thegoodthepoda1
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-g
Buzzsprout: https://thegoodthepodandtheugly.buzzsprout.com/
Letterboxd (follow us!):
Ken: Ken Koral
Jack: jackk1096