Poseidon Quickies: "Hush" Now!

I truly didn't intend to be missing in action from this blog for all but one day of January! I ran into one of those instances in which I watched several things, thinking they would be prime material for a post, only to be disinterested in dissecting them further. (That's saying a lot when you think about the truly abysmal shit I focused on - and wrote about - while I was recovering from recent minor surgery! LOL) It was sort of the equivalent of writer's block. "Blogger's Block?" But then, like a drop of ambrosia from Olympus, I stumbled onto Hush (1998), a movie I had never seen, even though I'd made it a point in life never to miss one of those "_____ from hell" flicks, such as The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992, killer nanny), The Good Son (1993, killer kiddie), The Temp (1993, killer office admin), The Babysitter (1995, self-explanatory) and all the rest. Hush was filmed in 1996 when the trend was still reasonably hot, but since its release didn't occur until 1998, interest in the genre had waned. Add in the fact that this wound up a highly-troubled project, complicated by over-reliance on test screenings, and you have a real disaster in the making. It barely took in 2/3 of its budget and was greeted by critical scorn. It was likely the rotten reviews (along with a general lack of affection for the stars involved) that led me to skip it back in the day.

Hush begins with a young, unmarried couple arriving at his family's Kentucky horse farm late at night, having come from new York City where they live and work. Johnathan Schaech and Gwyneth Paltrow play the lovebirds. She is assigned her own bedroom in accordance with his mother's traditional views, but he convinces her to join him in his for some midnight mashing. 

Paltrow has a more-than-awkward meeting with the mother (Jessica Lange) the following morning when she emerges from bed, stark naked, expecting to see Schaech, but instead comes face-to-er, face, with his mama.

Paltrow's body double can't get under the sheets fast enough, then afterwards she has to carry on small talk with Lange. Lange is all southern charm, yet already there's a tinge of "off"-ness to her. In this shot, she looks like she's about to take over Jack Nicholson's role as The Joker in the next Batman flick!

Schaech makes a faint pretense of having some sort of spine, but he really has trouble saying no to his mother. Initially only staying through Christmas Day, he's soon coerced into remaining until New Year's.

Now I don't think that the couple is intended to be any sort of concrete version of John F. Kennedy Jr and his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, but there's an unquestioned sense of using that famed NYC couple as a touchstone of style and applying it to this movie's characters.

And I'm sure it's merely coincidence that Mama Lange wears a Jackie Kennedy-ish hat to church as well. Incidentally, expressions like this one, which I call "Zuni Fetish Doll" tip her hat early on that Paltrow is not going to have an easy time of it when it comes to in-law relationships...

Moments like this one brought back uncomfortable memories for me of her turn as Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1984.) Many may have loved her in that, but I wasn't among them. I did, however, eventually appreciate her overall talent as an actress during her various incarnations across several seasons of American Horror Story. This movie seems like a prelude to that and I couldn't help wondering if Hush was a favorite of Ryan Murphy's...

As promised, Schaech stays through New Year's Eve and his midnight kiss this time is reserved for his mom. She wants him there permanently in order to help run the farm, which is faltering over time. And, leave though they might, Lange may not be done trying to keep her son nearby.

Paltrow gets a shock when she discovers that, regardless of her trusty contraception device, she is pregnant! (Lange may or may not - though it's very likely - have altered said device while the couple was in her home to render it worthless.)

Thus, a wedding is now called for. So Schaech and Paltrow are back on the farm for an elegant outdoor ceremony.

Lange does everything she can think of to appear as the picture perfect M.O.B.

I truly don't know what in the hell was going on here, though, with these bizarre bridesmaid gowns and headgear! Her matron of honor, by the way, is played by Debi Mazar as a very "New Yawk" coworker and friend. That helps explain why her getup is out of place, even among the other fashion disasters.

Popping up at the ceremony is Schaech's paternal grandmother Nina Foch. Paltrow discovers that Foch had been wanting to meet her for some time, but she never got that message. Hmmmm.

Now, I love, worship and adore Ms. Foch and am always glad when I see her name listed in the credits. She looks terrific and I was elated that she wasn't relegated to just one or two brief moments, but showed up a few times along the way.

One thing I loved about Hush was the overall look of the movie. Virginia (standing in for Kentucky) scenery, elegant houses, tailored clothing and flattering lighting gave the movie a sometimes glamorous look that was harder to find in the grunge-filled '90s than it had been in the excessive (but oh so fun) '80s.

Shortly after the nuptials, back in The Big Apple, Paltrow is assaulted one night at knife point! The crud doesn't seem to want anything from her besides a locket she treasures, but slashes at her abdomen for good measure. 

Paltrow recovers from her ordeal in the couple's loft. Notice how the view from upstairs affords a clear shot of the toilet (bottom-left corner!) Ahhh... Urban living. Anyway... The decision is made to move to Kentucky and help get the horse farm back on its feet so that it will be able to sell for a better price than the low-ball offer that's currently on the table.

Here is where we get the first blatant signs of post-production tampering. On the left is Paltrow debating with Schaech the possibility of relocating to Kentucky. On the right is the very next scene in the film! The young actress's soft features are now replaced by a drawn, gaunt face and an obvious wig.

This sequence was shot two years after the movie had been completed! Not only had her features significantly hardened, but she looked unhealthily gaunt. I don't even want to speculate as to what must have gone down during those 20 or so months in Hollyweird, but apart from that there was no effort to maintain the illusion that the character was even pregnant! 

In the scene before, she had a tummy and was doing the "wobbly walk and rub" so common among actresses playing women with child. Compare that to her rail-thin appearance right after! All of us evolve (in my case, erode!) from year to year, but this instance was startling.

I don't know if this publicity shot is from the first version of the scene in question (it was cold at the time), but it gives one an idea of how it ought to have looked.

Once settled in at the horse farm, Schaech one day finds himself tossed from his steed into a mud hole.

Coated from head to toe in gunk, he's met at the barn by Mama Lange.

She wastes no time in shucking off his filthy shirt...

...and hosing him down! Some horseplay soon follows. Tally this sequence up to another rare highlight of the movie.

With sonny boy back on the scene, the farm is producing winners again. Lange is in her glory, with her horses doing well at the races and Schaech at her side. But Paltrow is becoming annoyed at certain disinformation being spread as well as attempts by Lange to control her.

The young couple have a bit of a face-off on the street of the local town. Again, this sequence, inadvertent or on purpose, recalls the public squabble once captured of JFK Jr and his Mrs.

Against Lange's express wishes, Paltrow begins to pay visits to wheelchair-bound Foch at her luxurious retirement center.

The still-canny Foch has a few things to say about her daughter-in-law Lange, whose husband (and her son) died in a freak accident when Schaech was a little boy.

You can probably guess that none of this sits well with the controlling Lange, who then pays a visit to Foch herself as the elderly woman is receiving a steam treatment (in an unaccountably dark and empty pool room!)

It isn't long before the conversation becomes dark and threatening.

Lange makes lengthy confessions for her sins, but chooses to do so when there's no one there to actually take in what she's saying!

Before all is said and done, she's snatched the baby, fresh from its womb, with the intention of keeping it all to herself. In a typically senseless bit of continuity, she wears an apron during the birth and it winds up coated down in bloody muck. But JUST the apron! Not the shirt underneath! Why? Because the plot calls for her to remove the apron and appear to look unblemished, not because she was able to stay clean beneath it. Makes no sense, but in the final analysis, little does...

Also appearing in this film is Mr. Hal Holbrook as the family doctor. In the original cut of the film, someone comes out of Lange's house in a body bag after the baby's birth and I sort of suspect it was he, but who knows...

I also think that, in the first cut, Foch was done in. But in the re-imagined version, she is still kicking. Again, you can tell this scene is a reshoot from that wig that glued onto Paltrow's head...

It's stunningly obvious...! These two shots are supposed to have been from the same day! The inset from earlier with Foch and the main pic later that evening.

The initial movie was to be rated R and surely contained more mayhem. None of the scenes shown above appear in the released PG-13 film even though they made the trailer! Schaech is never seen with the telltale locket, the fire in the barn never occurs, Lange and Paltrow fighting in a nursery with Lange wielding a piece of broken mirror is nowhere to be seen and there is no body removed from the house. The result is a very soft, hole-filled mess with a less than satisfying ending. The movie's writer-director Jonathan Darby, whose first feature this was, only did one short film thereafter. Whatever potential there was for a rousing thriller bit the dust once test screeners decided they didn't like the ending. And the film isn't perceived as important enough to warrant a Director's Cut on DVD. 

At the time Hush was filmed, Lange, who'd overcome an inauspicious start with King Kong (1976) to take home an Oscar for Tootsie (1982), had recently taken home a second statuette for Blue Sky (1994.) She'd costarred in Rob Roy (1995) and starred in a rendition of A Streetcar Named Desire (1995) opposite Alec Baldwin. Though she continued to work rather steadily, it came to be that her association with producer Ryan Murphy provided the meatiest parts in American Horror Story and Feud. Her work in Grey Gardens and the aforementioned Horror Story gleaned her three Emmys. Now 75, she continues to act on both the big and small screen. 

Paltrow is the daughter of producer-director Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner and got her start on screen in a project of his and her start on stage via her mother. This was followed by a role in her godfather Steven Spielburg's feature film Hook (1991.) Things continued on an upward trajectory from there with Flesh and Bone (1993), Se7en (1995) and Emma (1996.) By the time Hush limped into theaters, she'd already filmed the movie that would win her a Best Actress Oscar, Shakespeare in Love (1998.) After that came more hits along with some misses. Though she still performs on screen occasionally, her focus in recent years has been as an entrepreneur of sometimes controversial food and "health" products. The circus of a lawsuit she endured over an alleged skiing accident inspired two separate musical productions! She is now 52. 

Schaech first gained attention as a model for products including Armani and as an arm candy beard for the then-closeted comedienne Ellen DeGeneres. He was selected by Franco Zefferelli for a role in 1993's Storia di una capinera (aka Sparrow), claiming years later to have been sexually assaulted by the director. A brief stay on Models, Inc. was followed by roles in The Doom Generation and How to Make an American Quilt (both 1995), which made him a flavor of the month to showbiz press. The big hit That Thing You Do! (1996) made him even more familiar to moviegoers, though his output thereafter tended to be less significant. Nevertheless, he has never stopped working and balanced film roles with plentiful television. He is now 55.

Schaech in his hey-day as a Wilhelmina West model.

Whether Mazar's role was any more substantial in the early version of the movie I cannot tell you. But she barely appears in the final cut. Mostly one brief scene in an office and then just basically wordless shots thereafter a couple of times. Initially a club kid who did makeup for newly-befriended Madonna, she appeared in five of the singer's videos and segued onto TV and into small movie roles including Goodfellas (1990), The Doors (1991) and Malcolm X (1992.) In time she grew into abusy character actress whose sharp tongue added spice to a variety of projects. That's Life, Entourage and Younger are some of the TV series on which she regularly appeared. Just before 2020, she relocated with her husband to Florence, Italy with her Italian husband and their two children, though she still acts in projects there and elsewhere. She is 60.

Foch entered films at Columbia Pictures at the tender age of 19. Making a mark in A Song to Remember (1945) along with the well-regarded B-thriller My Name is Julia Ross (1945), she wound up being underutilized and labeled unattractive enough to thrive as a leading lady. Having fled to Broadway where she became a hit in John Loves Mary, she returned to Hollywood with more confidence, but still tended to wind up in supporting parts, including An American in Paris (1951) and Scaramouche (1952.) A seemingly insignificant role in Executive Suite (1954) led to her only Oscar nomination (which went to Eva Marie Saint of On the Waterfront, inexplicably appearing in the Supporting category.) Many viewers may recall her turn as Moses' adoptive mother in The Ten Commandments (1956.) During this period (1954-1959) she was married to James Lipton of Inside the Actors Studio. While popping up on many TV shows and the occasional film (such as Mahogany, 1975, Skin Deep, 1989, and Sliver, 1993), Foch worked as an exacting acting coach and teacher. She died in 2008 of a blood disorder, one day after first feeling unwell, at age 84. 

I'll call an end to this post with a couple more shots of Schaech's horse bath. (There's an inside joke for me here. My stepfather used to often make mention of a "whore's bath" in which a lady of the evening would just go over key body parts with a washcloth. But my best friend misinterpreted the phrase as a "horse bath" (!) and never got the connotation.)

Keep it clean, till next time!