Movies Cast A Spell In 'Show People'
In the 1990 showbiz send-up Soapdish, daytime-soap lifer Celeste Talbert (Sally Field) meets her secret daughter and stumbles through apologies for not raising her, finally sighing, "Hell, I'm not a genius, I'm just a working actress." It's honest, and for a moment, Laurie (Elisabeth Shue) softens. Celeste, sensing her moment, delivers a heart-wrenching speech...that Laurie recognizes from The Sun Also Sets: "It was the Thanksgiving show."
That shuts things down; Celeste has no defense, and anyway, they're due on set — the new episode is filming, and they're both in today's scene.
Film is a heck of a thing. Acting offers the illusion of spontaneity's finale drops from screwball to cruel (a transphobic big reveal that suggests much about what counted as comedy in 1990), but its gleefully heartless chaos shares the cynicism of Jean Harlow's , nearly 60 years earlier. Both films think showbiz is rotten work full of rotten folk; still, you might as well.
