Ok, here goes...
Sunday night, the Lifetime movie "Liz & Dick" starring Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor and Grant Bowler as Richard Burton aired on television. As anyone who's read any review or blog I've ever written knows, I tend to take movies for what they are... entertainment. This, however, wasn't even that. I'm just going to say it; the film should have never been made and here's why...
Alright, let's start with the fact that Lindsay Lohan was embarrassingly miscast as Elizabeth Taylor. Now, this isn't news. Anyone who expected her to be "perfect" for this role, either knows nothing about Elizabeth Taylor or is a complete moron. But hey, let's give the girl a chance, right? Maybe she'll surprise us. After all, she has turned out some pretty good performances in her career. However, nothing could have prepared me for just how BAD her acting was here! It was bad! There's no other word for it. She literally read each line like a middle-school kid in a school play reciting half-memorized lines from a script. The script, by the way, was not so good either.
By no means do I blame Lindsay completely for the movie's failure. The producers (no matter what they say) cast her because they knew it would generate buzz and ratings. At some point it seems as though they stopped caring weather or not it was a good film and only focused on how many viewers and revenue they could get. No surprise there. In fact, the whole film was shot in 21 days! And it shows. Even TV movies deserve a respectable shooting schedule.
Not only did Lindsay not "become", "evoke", or even "resemble" Elizabeth, but judging by her performance and some of the interviews I've heard and seen with her, I don't think she's ever seen an Elizabeth Taylor movie or really for that matter knows or bothered to research anything about her. That's most likely the reason for her flat, lifeless performance. I can't believe the producers had the GAUL to suggest that Lindsay is the "Modern day Elizabeth Taylor". Excuse me? To the best of my rather extensive knowledge, I don't recall Elizabeth ever getting arrested in night clubs, crashing cars, flipping off judges, having coke-induced fist fights with her equally messed up mother, or having warrants out in multiple states for her arrest and being on probation. But that's just me.
Now about the movie itself, I have extensive notes of things that I wanted to touch on because there really are THAT many:
Lindsay's look:
At times in the film, she really did look rather beautiful. However, those goddamn lip injections were so distracting it was hard to notice. She managed to look both too young and too old to play Elizabeth at the same time. I don't know how that's possible, but if you saw the movie, you know what I'm talking about. The "Cleopatra" scenes were almost laughable. The costumes were nothing like the actual garments, the eye makeup (which was the start of the 60's 'cat eye' look and pretty important to the story) looked like it was done at a teenage girl's slumber party, the "Virginia Woolf" scenes (though, thankfully brief) were perhaps the worst of all. The set was good, but Lindsay looked anorexic and the whole point of showing that followed by a few scenes dealing with Elizabeth's weight problems was that she gained twenty pounds for the role and used prosthetics to look more fat and dumpy. Completely pointless. One of the things that also got under my skin was that Lindsay was rarely seen in purple. This probably doesn't sound like a big deal, but again, anyone who knows anything about Elizabeth knows that she wore purple ALL the time to set off her violet eyes and because it was her favorite color. She wears a lot of black and dark rather somber colors in this film which simply wasn't Elizabeth's style. I don't know who made that decision.
Elizabeth/Lindsay's personality:
Lindsay played Elizabeth as a selfish, spoiled, rather cold and heartless, materialistic, pretentious bitch who didn't give a damn about anyone but herself. That was not Elizabeth. She was famously kind and generous. She liked her jewels, yes but by no means did she put them before people. In the movie, the one or two times, the children are mentioned, she speaks as if she couldn't care less about them or just forgot she had them to begin with. This was not at all true. In fact, most of the staff they had in their traveling entourage was to protect the children. Elizabeth was forever apologizing for what the kids had to go through due to the Taylor/Burton affair/lifestyle. This again, shows the writer and Lindsay's lack of knowledge about their subject.
Lindsay's portrayal of Elizabeth was also WAY too overdramatic. She smashes a bottle in every other scene. In fact, one of the many drinking games going around on twitter the night it aired was to take a shot every time she smashed a bottle. Then the scene where she half-heartedly attempts suicide by overdosing on pills because she "won't live without Richard" just came off as stupid. Yes, stupid. I wanted to slap her because there wasn't an iota of sincerity in anything she said.
Elizabeth was vulnerable, yes, but she was also one of the strongest women who ever lived and she was a fighter! They barely mentioned any of her health problems, including, you know that little episode where she was pronounced DEAD while filming "Cleopatra" in London before it was moved to Rome.
She and Richard really loved each other and it all just came off as an acting game in the movie.
Inaccuracies:
Where do I even begin? First of all, the circumstances under which they met on the set of "Cleopatra" are rather important to how the rest of the story played out. But I guess the film makers didn't think that was important which is why the timeline of this movie made no sense.
Elizabeth had married Eddie Fisher breaking up him and Debbie Reynolds in the wake of the death of Mike Todd (Elizabeth's third husband and Eddie's best friend). They were never in love. That whole thing came out of grief. Elizabeth was labeled a whore by the press for breaking up America's sweethearts which added to how big a deal this scandal was. It also didn't help that Richard was married to Sybil Burton and both couples had children. This was during the fall of the studio system when studios didn't have publicity departments to cover these things up and the beginning of the paparazzi. "La Scandale" as the affair was dubbed by the press really was the beginning of tabloid journalism. People today don't realize just how big this was. At one point the Pope himself accused Elizabeth of being guilty of "erotic vagrancy" and the Vatican wanted to take her children away from her. This was no joke. Again, these things are just barely brushed upon. I could see them glossing over these things if they wanted to focus more on their private time alone, but the simple fact is they didn't even do that! And besides, the truth of the matter is that they simply didn't have enough "alone time" to fill a 90 minute movie. Another thing they didn't really go into which would have helped to make some sense out of the story and situation was how hard it was for both of them to obtain divorces from their respective partners. Eddie Fisher drug it out as long as he could, taking a pretty hefty chunk of alimony from Elizabeth and Sybil Burton was in no hurry to let Richard go right away even though he was a famous womanizer long before this. On a more personal, opinionated note, I just want to point out that Eddie Fisher was a first rate scum and I hate him. Well, hated* now that he's dead.
Grant Bowler, who I'm actually a huge fan of (I've had a crush on him since I saw him in "Ugly Betty") I thought was the perfect choice to play Richard. However, because (in my opinion) of the script, he came off as a bit of a wimp. The reason Elizabeth didn't care for Richard the first time they met was that she thought he was sort of a pretentious theater and intellectual snob and rather arrogant. He sort of was but then the first day of filming on "Cleopatra" with Richard, he came in completely hung over and his hands were shaking so badly he couldn't bring a cup of coffee to his lips. Elizabeth went over to help him and apparently that maternal pang she felt for him is what started to change her tune. That could have been a really adorable scene in the movie, but they instead opted to show Richard introducing himself by shamelessly telling Elizabeth she was beautiful and her refusing to shake his hand because of her wet nails and bitchily walking away in the middle of his sentence.
After "Cleopatra" the Burtons made a deal that they would never work apart. This cost film and insurance companies astronomical sums of money but it was okay, because everything these two touched seemed to turn to gold. They were THE celebrity couple to see and be seen with. Prior to "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", the two films they made were okay if not great but then with "Virginia Woolf" they made a fortune both for themselves and the film. Now, after that, due to their excessive personal lifestyle and insane spending their careers really didn't rise to those great heights again. As one writer said "They no longer made movies that mattered". However, even though they weren't masterpieces (like "The Sandpiper" and "Divorce His, Divorce Hers"), people wanted to see "Liz & Dick".
The Academy Award situation was brought up in the film. It wasn't really explained well though. Richard was essentially a stage actor (a GREAT stage actor) and eventually a great film actor as well, but for some reason was always passed over at Oscar time. Elizabeth however had won an oscar for "Butterfield 8", a movie she hated and admittedly said she won as a consolation prize for having nearly died in London and having an emergency tracheotomy. Then won again (and very deservedly) for "Virginia Woolf" while Richard was one of the few nominees on the film who lost that year. One of the conflicts in the Burton's marriage/careers was that since "Cleopatra", Elizabeth's earning power was much more than his. She was the first star in history to be paid a million dollars for a single role and that became her standard fee (which she lowered more than once in order to co-star with Richard in future films). Richard couldn't compete with her in the bankable star department and it clearly bruised his ego.
The legendary Taylor/Burton fights and brawls fizzled miserably in this film. They enjoyed fighting. Elizabeth once said an "out and out fight is one of the greatest exercises in marital togetherness". These scenes could have been movie GOLD but again, they were underplayed and fell flat. I read a few reviews that described them as hilariously bad and "campy fun". No. And that's what makes it even more sad. If they were over-the-top, campy fights, they'd at least be enjoyable to watch. Instead, they drag and you wait for them to be over. There were some great one liners but the delivery was so bad that they weren't even chuckle-worthy. It was just a disaster.
The movie also implied that after their second divorce that was the end of their relationship. This is not even remotely true. They remained very close until Richard's death. In fact, in 1983 they reunited to do a Broadway revival of Noel Coward's "Private Lives" to rave reviews and great success. Elizabeth, at the request of Richard's then wife stayed away from the funeral to avoid a media circus but was devastated and admittedly never really got over his death. The scene where she visits his grave and is supposed to be playing Elizabeth nearing the age of sixty (Lindsay is 26) is again, embarrassing. She looks ridiculous in the 80's wig, shoulder pads, and the ever-present collagen injected lips.
Oh, just a side note. I keep reading over and over again that Lindsay abandoned Elizabeth's "English accent". Elizabeth Taylor DID NOT have an English accent! She was born in London and lived there until she was seven. By the time she was a teenager she had merely a hint of an English inflection nothing more. Originally I wanted to point this out to give Lindsay a little credit, but then I watched the movie and there are three or four scenes where she goes in and out of what I can only assume is an English accent but it actually sounds more like a speech impediment.
The Jewels:
Okay, I saved this one for last because this was my single biggest problem with the film. You can't tell a story about this relationship without mentioning the jewels and the stories surrounding them and that is because the jewels marked milestones in the relationship and actually helped to further it. Not to mention the pieces are legendary. I'm not going to go into too much detail because that would make this post a lot longer than it already is, but I'll give you the gist...
The Bulgari Emerald Suite:
Necklace, pendant/brooch, earrings, bracelet, and ring were given to Elizabeth piece by piece on different occasions. The necklace (with the detachable brooch was purchased from Bulgari in the showroom during the filming of "Cleopatra") was cheaply and unattractively recreated using of all things, a ROUND ruby necklace that was made green with CGI. Really? Apparently due to the copyright of some of the pieces they couldn't be exact, but how about using, I don't know EMERALD CUT STONES FOR EMERALDS! It looked cheap. And the scene where she picks it out (which is not how it happened) looked like she walked into Target, said, "That's cute. I want that", bought it and left. The necklace eventually grew into the famous Emerald and Diamond suite which I'll post a picture of at the bottom of this post.
The Krupp Diamond:
THEY NEVER MENTION THE KRUPP DIAMOND! She's wearing a version of it throughout the film, but it's never mentioned! How is that possible! Elizabeth wore this nearly every day of her life until she died and it was one of the first really big things Richard gave her. In fact it's name has been changed to the "Elizabeth Taylor Diamond". It's 33.19 karats and used to belong to Vera Krupp (of the Krupps who helped knock off millions of jews) and since Elizabeth had converted to Judaism for Eddie Fisher she thought it would be perfect for a "nice little Jewish girl like her" to own it. Another fabulous story that wasn't acknowledged.
The Cartier Diamond AKA: The Taylor/Burton Diamond (69.42 karats):
In 1969 this was the largest diamond ever put on the market and Richard was hell-bent on getting it for Elizabeth for her 40th birthday. In the movie the reason behind his getting the diamond was as an apology for calling her fingers "pudgy little digits" so she wanted a big ring to make them look smaller. While it's true that Elizabeth had rather pudgy fingers and that was one of the things he picked on her about (she often picked on his pockmarks), that had nothing to do with why they purchased this diamond. In fact it was originally set into a ring (which can be seen on my favorite episode of "Here's Lucy" called "Lucy Meets The Burtons" where she gets the ring stuck on her finger) but Elizabeth said it was too big even for her so she had Cartier design a necklace for it and wore it for the first time at Princess Grace of Monaco's 40th birthday party. The diamond was also i interchangeable at one point from a necklace to a ring. Also, in the film, the auctioneer announces that the winner of the auction was Richard Burton on the phone. Also not true. Cartier was actually the winner of the auction which is why it was dubbed "The Cartier Diamond". But what Elizabeth wanted, Elizabeth got. So, minutes after the end of the auction, Richard called Cartier who agreed to sell it to him for a minimum profit due to the great amount of publicity it would receive with the condition that Cartier could put the diamond on display for the public to see before handing it over. Over 6,000 people flocked to the window of Cartier New York to get a glimpse of it. Cartier paid $1,050,000 for it at auction. It was the largest sum ever paid for a jewel up to that time. After Richard and Elizabeth divorced, she sold the diamond for $5,000,000 to build a hospital in Botswana. It was the only piece she ever sold.
The Diamond on display at Cartier in New York.
The Peregrina Pearl:
The Peregrina Pearl was one of the more famous pieces purchased for Elizabeth by Richard because it has an amazing history spanning over 550 years. I won't go into it. Instead, I'm linking a page with a pretty good rundown of it's history. In the movie, Lindsay does wear a replica of the necklace (which is pretty identical to the one Elizabeth designed for it with Cartier, making their "CGI copyright infringement of the jewels seem like a bullshit excuse to get out of spending the money to replicate all the jewelry). All she says about it in the movie is "Richard just said, 'Elizabeth, here's another trinket for you'". Again, the whole story about how they came to own the pearl is great. When they finally got it home it fell off it's original chain and they found it in their dog's mouth. It's a funny story that you can read online and again, it could have been really funny and sweet to watch but they decided to leave it out of the film.
History of La Pelegrina:
http://www.gemselect.com/other-info/la-peregrina-pearl.php
Richard also bought her the Taj Mahal diamond and lots of other things from Bulgari, Cariter, Tiffany's, and so on but I just wanted to touch on the more important pieces.
The Taj Mahal Diamond
Interview with the jewelry designer on the film:
http://www.pricescope.com/blog/creation-elizabeth-taylors-jewelry-liz-dick
So, in conclusion, the movie was a complete and total failure in every single way. Once again, I don't blame Lindsay completely, but her acting was less than sub-par and the chemistry between every cast member was nonexistent. I've read that Lindsay is blaming various things for the failure of the movie like the script, the editing, being cast in the first place etc... But I also heard her telling Jay Leno how she fought for this role and wanted to play it more than anything and how "proud" she was of the final result. I'll post that video as well. Own up to it, Lilo. You screwed up...again. Don't look around desperately trying to assign blame. And if all that wasn't enough, just last night (two days after the airing of the movie and Twitter blowing up with Liz & Dick drinking games and digs at her) she was charged with assault at a night club in NYC then hours later arrested in LA for reckless driving. The only thing Lindsay has in common with Elizabeth Taylor is that they both went to Betty Ford for substance abuse, except Elizabeth actually stayed the full time and kicked her problems.
If you really want to know the truly fascinating story of the Burtons, there is an amazing book that came out shortly before Elizabeth's death which I reviewed on her (I'll link that below) called "Furious Love". It's accurate, entertaining, and really paints a wonderful portrait of the real "Liz & Dick" relationship and sensation it caused. It also explains why we're still fascinated with them after all these years while the movie doesn't make it seem all that interesting.
Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and The Marriage of The Century By: Sam Kashner & Nancy Shoenberger:
http://vincentsestito.blogspot.com/2011/05/furious-love-by-sam-kashner-nancy.html
Some of the tabloids exposing the affair when the news broke:
The shots seen round the world that originally confirmed "La Scandale":
One of my favorite pictures of Elizabeth and Richard:
Lindsay on Leno:
Could she had made it any more awkward for him? Sorry, youtube wouldn't let me embed it. Just click the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KqNJtpsIMc
Elizabeth & Richard Interview:
You really see their chemistry and self-deprecating humor here which was totally absent in the film.
Lindsay on "Good Morning America"
Apparently they thought she had a hit on her hands. Woops!
The End.