Featuring Meryl Streep (Mamma Mia!, The Iron Lady, The Hours, Death Becomes Her, Doubt, The Devil Wears Prada), Ed Begley Jr. (Star Trek: Voyager, Batman Forever), and Roseanne Barr (Roseanne), She-Devil is a dark comedy film directed by Susan Seidelman (Desperately Seeking Susan), based upon the 1983 novel The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by British writer Fay Weldon. According to The New York Times article, “Streep and Barr Grapple in ‘She-Devil’“:
”This movie is about contrasts,” says the director Susan Seidelman, and indeed it’s hard to imagine a more contrasting pair of stars. One is tall and sleek; the other is, well, fat. One is refined; the other, outrageous. One trained at Yale; the other, in biker bars. One does accents; the other, wisecracks. One is Streep, the other is Barr.
Yes, Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr – the queen of the movies and the empress of prime time – are together, improbably, in Ms. Seidelman’s new film ”She-Devil,” shot this summer in New York and scheduled to open in December. In the film, based on the 1983 Fay Weldon novel ”The Life and Loves of a She-Devil,” Miss Barr plays the dumpy – and dumped on – housewife Ruth, whose husband, Bob, deserts her for the glamorous romance novelist Mary, played by Ms. Streep. To avenge this injustice, Ruth transforms herself into a ”she devil,” who ruins the lovers and in the process discovers her self-worth.
On a day off from filming, in the SoHo loft she shares with the movie’s producer Jonathan Brett, Ms. Seidelman discusses how the unusual – and enviable – cast (which includes Ed Begley Jr. as the philandering Bob, Sylvia Miles as Mary’s troublesome mother and Linda Hunt as Ruth’s friend) came about.
”Meryl is such a brilliant actress, she could have played Ruth,” says Ms. Seidelman, but instead she signed on to play Mary. ”Then,” says the director, ”we needed someone who was larger than your usual heroine – in some way larger than life. Roseanne’s name kept popping up.” Miss Barr, the star of ABC’s phenomenally successful series ”Roseanne,” had never acted in a film, but Ms. Seidelman decided she would be right.
Ms. Seidelman has shown a penchant for unorthodox casting, picking the then relatively unknown Madonna for a part in ”Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985) and the British actress Emily Lloyd for the part of a Brooklyn teen-ager in ”Cookie,” which opened Wednesday.
In the case of Madonna, at least, the director’s instincts paid off in an unanticipated shower of publicity. Similarly, with the intriguing combination of Ms. Streep and Miss Barr, two of Hollywood’s brightest lights, the production was hounded by fans begging for autographs, paparazzi stalking the locations and reporters clamoring to visit the set. Even Mr. Begley says of the two actresses, ”I would work as the [ food ] services person, do the slate, be the boom man. Anything, to work with them.” What makes the casting even more unusual is the fact that Miss Barr has the serious role, while Ms. Streep, as the ultra-feminine, pretentious writer Mary, has the more comedic part. ”That’s what I like about it,” Ms. Seidelman says enthusiastically. ”I like casting that I haven’t seen before. I love working with Meryl in the kind of movie that she doesn’t normally do.”
During a lunch break on location in downtown New York, Ms. Streep says she was interested in the part of Mary because ”she’s a real glamour puss. And I haven’t played a lot of those. It’s a real stretch.” Draped in silk and pearls, her long blond hair curled around her shoulders, Ms. Streep looks the part. ”Mary is everybody’s image of a movie star,” the actress says. ”She’s interviewed by ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ and by People magazine. These are the things I should be doing,” she says wryly, slamming the table for emphasis.
She says she was drawn to the script partly because of ”the issues it deals with. The issues of the woman who’s dumped because she’s fat and the woman who’s picked up because of the way she looks.” Society’s preoccupation with appearances is more pronounced now ”than 10 years ago,” she says. ”Look at who’s in Congress, who’s running the studios. I see more people having plastic surgery. It’s too bad.” Her last film, ”A Cry in the Dark,” in which she portrayed a woman wrongly accused of murdering her baby, ”was sort of about that,” says Ms. Streep. ”It was about the truth packaged in an unappealing, unattractive wrapper. A triumph of form over substance.”
Working on this comedy – her first since ”Heartburn” in 1986 – ”has been just a riot,” she says. ”I just frankly wanted to do a film that didn’t cost me 75 pounds of emotional weight.” Of Miss Barr, with whom she actually shares only a handful of scenes, Ms. Streep says, ”She’s smart and sassy.”
The admiration is mutual. ”Meryl is hysterical,” Miss Barr says. ”She’s a great comedienne.” Miss Barr adds that she has tried to pick up some tips from the eight-time Oscar nominee. ”I asked her some well-chosen questions, although if I had my way, I’d be all over her 24 hours a day, asking, ‘What about this? what about that?’ ”
Miss Barr’s conversation is punctuated with bouts of singing, hooting, uncontrollable laughter and obscene jokes. Since her earliest stand-up routines, one of her pet topics has been the shortcomings of men, especially men like Ruth’s husband, Bob. ”Our job,” she says of women, ”is to raise the human race. Men have gotta catch up to us. And they’ve got about a million years to go.” She took the role in ”She-Devil,” she says, ”because it was a real positive woman’s part, not a female impersonator or a drag queen. Ruth is Everywoman.” Although she is irrepressibly funny, she says it is ”a fabulous relief” not to play a comic role in the film, ”because I’ve known for a long time that I had more in me than that.”
Doing ”She-Devil,” she says, is just one step in her ambitious plans. ”I want to make a series of films. I want to write them, I want to direct them and I want to star in them, too. They’ll be about me in one way or another. I want to be Woody Allen.”
Later, she has a second thought. ”I want to be the girl Indiana Jones. I would love to do an adventure movie, where I was saving the world.” Would she have a gimmick, like Indy’s whip or hat? ”I think my entire being is gimmick enough.” she says with a cackle, adding, ”It might be cool if I used a lot of kitchen tools to fight off the enemy.”
Miss Barr recently wrote her autobiography, ”Roseanne: My Life as a Woman,” to be published by Harper & Row in October. And, of course, there is her television show, which was No. 1 at the end of last season. ”I’ll do the show till people don’t like it anymore,” Miss Barr says emphatically. ”Or until we have to take a family trip to Hawaii or go to Russia,” she says, referring to plot devices used by other sitcoms. ”Or when we have to start having guest stars. When Sammy Davis Jr. shows up, then I’ll quit.”
On the rose-colored set of the Vesta Rose Employment Agency, created by the character Ruth – under the alias of Vesta Rose – in order to infiltrate Bob’s business, Miss Barr has forsaken her bowling shirt and jeans for a pink suit and heels, and her tousled hair has been teased into a neat flip. While Ruth sits at her desk, plotting her husband’s downfall, her cheerful assistants, dressed in rose-patterned blouses, help a dozen women of all ages and ethnicities fill out pink employment forms.
A highly progressive outfit, the Vesta Rose Agency provides day care in a toy-filled nursery, where the director, clad as usual in basic downtown black, can be found between shots tossing a beach ball with the producer, Mr. Brett. The job agency is one of the elements Ms. Seidelman liked most about Fay Weldon’s novel when she happened to pick it up in a bookstore one day. ”Ruth does really nasty things, but in the wake of all the negative things, she does all these really wonderful things. She helps thousands of unemployed women. That’s kind of the beauty and the irony of it.”
Although the film is faithful to the first half of the book, Ms. Seidelman says that the screenwriters Mark Burns and Barry Strugatz, who wrote ”Married to the Mob,” have changed Ms. Weldon’s controversial ending, in which Ruth literally turns into Mary and takes on her nemesis’ life style. ”I wasn’t sure what the ending meant, because she becomes the other,” says the director. The message in the film will be clearer. ”It sounds corny, but it’s about how the Ruths out there don’t have to be powerless.”
Looking back on her films, Ms. Seidelman says, ”There is definitely a thread that runs through all the protagonists. Women who feel a little dissatisfied, outsiderlike, looking to change their lives in some way. Certainly that was true of the character in ‘Smithereens,’ and of Roberta in ‘Desperately Seeking Susan.’ Frankie Stone in ‘Making Mr. Right’ looked a lot more together than she really was. And ‘Cookie’ is this girl who’s rebellious and trying to break out on her own. And now there’s Ruth, the dumped housewife who changes her life.”
This thread reflects the director’s perceptions of herself. ”I feel like an underdog. I have an affinity for losers. I never felt part of the mainstream. When I got out of film school, I didn’t relate to the film industry because of the kinds of films I wanted to make. But now I am part of the film industry,” she says with a shrug, indicating she is not entirely comfortable with this idea. ”Still, I’m sort of riding that line between independent and mainstream.”
Ms. Seidelman hesitates to discuss what her film says about men, because ”I’ve already gotten crucified for ‘Making Mr. Right.’ People said that it’s really anti-male, that I was saying the only good man was one that women could create themselves, or a robot or a dildo. But I’m in no way anti-male.
”The great thing about ‘She-Devil,’ ” she says, ”is that it’s not a female thing. Everyone dreams revenge plots. Whether it’s a boyfriend who dumped you, a boss who fired you. Or,” – her eyes light with mischief – ”a critic who hated your movie.”
Additionally, according to The Guardian‘s article, “Death of a She Devil by Fay Weldon review – a reactionary sequel“:
There are two parts to Fay Weldon’s reputation: first that she is a feminist writer, and second that she is a very funny one. The “funny” is earned, the “feminist” less so, and Death of a She Devil is a credit to neither. When Weldon introduced Ruth Patchett in The Life and Loves of a She Devil, 34 years ago, she created one of literature’s greatest monsters. Deserted by callous husband Bobbo for the simpering romance novelist Mary Fisher, ugly doormat Ruth remakes herself as the She Devil and has her revenge on the adulterers. Her punisher’s progress takes her through every circle of society, from underclass to judiciary, from family to clergy, until finally she is surgically transformed into “an impossible male fantasy made flesh” – even losing six inches of leg to become desirably petite. At the close of the book, with Bobbo broken and Mary dead, Ruth’s triumph is complete.
Now Ruth is 84, and the lighthouse home from which the siren Fisher once lured husbands instead houses the Institute for Gender Parity, a feminist organisation of which Ruth is president. Grandee of women’s liberation seems a strange endpoint for Ruth, who in Life and Loves
In Death of a She Devil, Bobbo is in effect Ruth’s prisoner, ancient and confined to bed, from where he rants his misogyny and sexually assaults his nurse. Meanwhile, Mary haunts the lighthouse, indulging in some light poltergeist activities and narrating the political machinations within the institute. An ambitious young woman named Valerie Valeria has plans to replace the She Devil, and Ruth’s freakishly beautiful grandson Tyler seems like the perfect vehicle for her schemes.
Where Life and Loves was a venomous picaresque, Death of a She Devil aims for poison gothic – think of it as Gorgonghast, with Ruth as the old earl, while Valerie and Tyler vie for the Titus and Steerpike roles. But there are problems: nothing happens, no atmosphere is generated, and the jokes fail to land. When Ruth complains of feeling her age, it’s hard not to wish that she had been left in retirement. So why bring her back a whole generation later? Is this bare (if belated) cynicism, or does Weldon think the battle of the sexes has moved on enough that Ruth has something new to say?
Death of a She Devil presents a world that Ruth has rearranged in her own image, with “women triumphant, men submissive”. And if Ruth regrets the demise of “lusty men” or her betrayal of the maternal instinct, those are nothing compared with the indignities her grandson suffers because of feminism. Poor Tyler is passed over for jobs in favour of women, and only avoids being aborted because his mother mistakenly thinks she’s carrying a girl. In these androphobic times, there’s just one way to win: Tyler goes trans. “If you can’t beat us, join us,” Ruth tells him, which should be the opportunity for some delicious Weldon wickedness.
is interested in sisterhood only so far as it serves her malicious project. And her object, ultimately, is a man: Ruth’s hatred of Bobbo and Mary is savagely comic and thrillingly total, but however changed she is externally, she has merely reoriented herself from the housewife who does everything to make her man happy, to the fury who does everything to make him miserable.
But the novel is two thirds done before transitioning even comes up. Even then, Tyler is so passive as to be almost inert, which is a weakness for devilry. Weldon offers two lines of offence – trans women are really men infiltrating feminism, or they are the ultimate victims of misandry – but commits to neither, leaving Tyler dangling uselessly between. For scathing commentary on physical reinvention, Death trails a distant second to Life and Loves, in which Ruth tells her surgeon: “I have tried many ways of fitting myself to my original body, and the world into which I was born, and have failed. I am no revolutionary. Since I cannot change them, I will change my body.” Nothing Tyler says is nearly so close to the (sawn-down shin) bone.
Weldon’s satiric touch is off. She sounds less like an accomplished novelist than a foghorn columnist turning to fiction. There are sloppy mistakes (“sexties” instead of sexts, “transiting” instead of transitioning), none of which is as jarring as the central premise, which is that women rule the world. Backlash, defined by Susan Faludi, first exaggerates feminism’s victories, and then blames all women’s unhappiness on this pretended success. Death of a She Devil is a backlash novel. But then, so was Life and Loves: Ruth gets what she wants in the end, but realises that even in death Mary Fisher has won, for she remains “a woman” while Ruth is an unfeminine She Devil. Reactionary politics are nothing new for Weldon. Being boring, however, is.
According to Roger Ebert:
There must have been moments on the set of “She-Devil” where Roseanne Barr went into her dressing room and locked the door and asked herself what she was doing there, co-starring in a movie with the immortal Meryl Streep. We’re in on the amazement, because Barr has done such a thorough job of documenting her life in comedy routines, in confessional interviews, in her book and on talk shows. Here is a woman who only a few years ago couldn’t have gotten an autograph from Meryl Streep, let alone steal a scene from her.
There’s a delicious element of sweet revenge in Barr’s entire career. Here is the woman who proves, for all of us, that we could be TV stars and stand-up comics, if only we got a couple of breaks, because we’ve sure got more on the ball than the morons who are making it in show biz. And that sense of realized revenge is an undercurrent throughout “She-Devil,” which works both on a fictional level and as a real-life demonstration that Barr and Streep are indeed right there in the same movie.
If Barr is correctly cast, so is Streep, who has always had a rich vein of comedy bubbling through her personal life – few people are merrier during interviews – but who has dedicated her career to playing serious or even tragic women, most of them with accents. Here she’s given a juicy role to sink her teeth into: Mary Fisher, the best-selling romance novelist who seems like what would happen if the genes of Barbara Cartland, Jackie Collins and Danielle Steel were combined in the same trash compactor. It’s a role that calls out for broad, fearless interpretation, and Streep has a lot of fun with it.
Barr’s character is named Ruth, and she’s a fat, plain suburban housewife with a mole on her upper lip that looks like a surgically implanted raisin. She is married, none too securely, to an accountant named Bob (Ed Begley Jr.), who dreams of moving up in the ranks of his profession by becoming an accountant to the stars. Fate grants his wish. He meets Mary Fisher during an incident involving a spilled drink at a charity benefit, and one thing leads to another so rapidly that he cruelly drops off his wife at home before ending up in bed with the lustful novelist.
The heart of the movie involves the revenge that Ruth takes out on her husband and Mary Fisher – revenge so thorough and methodical that she even takes time to jot down the areas of her husband’s life she wants to destroy: first, his home; then his family, career and freedom, in that order. Bob has accused her of being a she-devil, and she is more than willing to play the role. She will haunt the faithless bastard until he wishes he had never heard of accounting, much less of Mary Fisher.
“She-Devil” was directed by Susan Seidelman, whose credits include “Desperately Seeking Susan,” the underrated “Making Mr. Right” and the recent “Cookie.” She has a sure touch for off-center humor, the kind that works not because of setups and punch lines, but because of the screwy logic her characters bring to their dilemmas. In the middle passages of this movie, she goes for broad comic strokes, especially in the way she portrays the gauche lifestyle of Mary Fisher, whose home looks like a Holiday Inn’s wet dream. Streep, as Mary Fisher, has erected a glamorous fictional facade around the mundane actual facts of her life, and it is with grim precision that Barr’s character pulls it to pieces.
When Zsa Zsa Gabor’s treacherous schoolmate added 10 years to the actress’ official age by producing that old school yearbook not long ago, I felt a twinge of sympathy for Gabor. If there is no honor among women lying about their ages, then what is sacred? But the Mary Fisher character in “She-Devil” is such a vain and snobbish woman that we can take a sadistic delight in Ruth’s most devilish scheme, which is to disguise herself as a nurse, locate the novelist’s feisty mother (Sylvia Miles) in an old folks’ home and produce her to the press along with a detailed history of Mary Fisher’s true past.
Begley, that tall, vaguely handsome and subtly bewildered actor from “St. Elsewhere,” is the fulcrum for a lot of the humor. His character requires him to operate consistently from the basest motives: lust, greed and envy. He projects these emotions so effortlessly, I hope they’re grooming him for the Donald Trump story. Willing to betray his wife on a moment’s notice but yet more interested in Mary Fisher’s body and fame than in the inner character she presumably possesses, he is a shallow and utterly worthless man, until the she-devil teaches him a lesson.
Debut movies are traditionally tricky for TV stars. For every Pee-wee Herman who finds the perfect movie vehicle, there’s a Henry Winkler who doesn’t. Barr could have made an easy, predictable and dumb comedy at any point in the last couple of years. Instead, she took her chances with an ambitious project – a real movie. It pays off, in that Barr demonstrates that there is a core of reality inside her TV persona, a core of identifiable human feelings like jealousy and pride, and they provide a sound foundation for her comic acting. The proof of it is that, on the basis of this movie, Streep didn’t have to retire to her own dressing room to ask herself what she was doing in a movie with Barr.
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