Audrey Hepburn 'couldn't sing and couldn't act', says Emma Thompson — Page 2

I love it when BWWers castigate celebrities for being judgemental and bitchy.

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Agreed, Borstal, and somehow there's an implication that it's somehow worse because she's saying it publicly with her name attached. It's better to be bitchy and judgmental anonymously?

Shades of (dare I say it?) Huntergate. Pages and pages (and sweet Jesus, pages) of bitchy judgmental name-calling without as much as a hint of acknowledgement of the hypocrisy involved.

We'll agree to disagree. What you see as bashing, I see as voicing an opinion. As to context, Thompson also talks about her emotional instability and troubles with depression.

I don't think BWWer's get a pass on hypocrisy just because the board is largely anonymous in nature and is utilized for other purposes. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy.

I will certainly agree it was ill-advised of Ms Thompson to voice those opinions, but you can't have it both ways. If the statement was calculated and not simply a bitchy, off-the-cuff statement, then you can add idiotic to ill-advised.

I have to say I agree with Emma in terms of the content of My Fair Lady. I just saw a wonderful production and I am really struck by the core context of the musical. You have these great songs and costumes, but at the core its much darker and complex.

A neglected young woman from a broken, alcohol abusing family who seems to be replicating her past by becoming attached to an emotionally abusive man who seems to have his own demons. I cringe when people are like "its so romantic." Really? It's pretty mysogynistic in many ways. I think it should end with Eliza leaving Henry.

Also, Emma just noted that she is going into seclusion for several years to deal with her long-standing depression and regroup. Maybe that had something to do with her comments-irritation and being short are symptoms of depression. Emma has never spoken quite so bitterly in public before.

Also, if she were having that conversation with a creative team or with you over coffee it would be perfectly acceptable. Its just a critique-Audrey Hepburn is not untouchable, even in death.

I also though the movie was a bore and could barely get through it once. I feel the same about many Oscar winners.

Let's cut Emma some slack.

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I'm also tired of "artists" bringing their agenda to established works. If you want to tell the story of the plight of Victorian women who had little chance for independence and self-sufficiency, then tell it. Write your own script.

My Fair Lady and Pygmalion are witty COMEDIES. They do manage to make us think about these issues, but that's not what they are largely about. It's a battle of the sexes, and a rather ingenious one at that.

This whole idea makes me itch.

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Whether it's a remake of a movie or a revival of a show, current coventional wisdom seems to be that you have to crap on the original when touting your new version. I guess that makes sense - why do it again if you can't do it "better"? - so I think it's just par for the course.

Heightening the "tragedy" of Eliza's story is not much different than that Annie production that made it all a dream.

Why is BorstalBoy so cranky lately?

I read the Thompson comments on Hepburn not as an attack on Hepburn in general - but on her performance in My Fair Lady. Still not the best thing to say - unwise definately - but in My Fair Lady Hepburn didn't sing, and acting ability is always a judgement call anyway.

All these years later and the English STILL can't learn how to speak!

"I'm also tired of "artists" bringing their agenda to established works."

This raises a very good point. I'm so tired of people having to explain what their view is. I think the show is less about how Victorian women were treated and more about the class system. Look at the women in the piece: Eliza, a cockney flowergirl, Mrs. Pearce, the Higgins housekeeper and Mrs. Higgins a well to do society woman. The difference in them is what class they belong to, not that they are women.

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I'm not so against agendas showing. It's when they are completely shoehorned in with little or no finesse. Like every time Susan Sarandon spoke in "Little Women."

**Well Nanny McPhee done got a sequel and My Fair Lady did not. How you like me now? WORD! **

If you measure the quality of a film by the number of sequels then Shrek and Rocky are among the best movies ever made ... do you really think so ?

Updated On: 8/10/10 at 12:14 PM

" I think the show is less about how Victorian women were treated and more about the class system."

Just to nitpick, the Victorian Age ended in 1901 upon the death of Queen Victoria. PYGMALION/MY FAIR LADY is set in Edwardian times (1912/1913). Well, George V was king by then (Edward VII died in 1910 after a mere nine-year rule), but the Edwardian Era is often extended up to the start of WWI in 1914.

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