"I am Catwoman. Hear me roar"
This post is, of course, part of the Pfeiffer blog-a-thon that Nathaniel over at The Film Experience has organised where bloggers all over the world celebrate the great one's birthday by writing anything at all about her. Click the link and check out what the others have to say...
My Pfeiffer post details my introduction to Michelle. It was 1994- 6 years old, coming home from school (that was St. Thomas' Prep back then) I passed the Liberty cinema. There, right next to the entrance, was a small poster reading Batman Returns (because living in Sri Lanka means, or used to mean, it always takes two years for a movie to grace the big screen). Being the Batman fanatic I am, I was thrilled - Finally! A Batman movie! I immediately scanned the names that were listed and drew a blank. Michael Keaton? Michelle Pfeiffer? Danny DeVito? Who were these people? I turned to my mother, sitting next to me, and asked "Who's Michelle Pfeiffer?", her reply was "Michelle Pfeiffer? She's a famous actress,"...
After that the movie wouldn't leave my mind. Months would go by before the film actually came to the screen (or at least it felt like that), and I could not get that poster out of my head. Every day, on the way home, I'd try to sneak a closer look, and when I was at home, all I could think of was seeing it. When the day finally came, My family, a few friends and I went to see the film. It was love (or at least lust) at first sight: from the moment La Pfeiffer stepped on screen as the mousy secratary, Selina Kyle, I couldn't take my eyes off her. When it finally came to moment where she stepped into the window frame, clad in skin-tight black leather, backed by a neon sign reading 'Hell Here' and purred "I don't know about you Kitty, but I feel so much yummier" I was hooked. To this day I can't watch that performance without being awe-struck. Wow. Pfeiffer and Tim Burton took that character, made her a 100 times more twisted that she ever was on paper, and came out with a character so dark, so confused and so downright sexy that one could only sit back breathless. By the film's last third, where Selina and Bruce Wayne dance to Siouxsie and the Banshees' 'Face to Face' and she asks "Does this mean we have to start fighting?", you have been taken on a rollercoaster ride, and damn that big yellow duck for coming in and cutting the scene short. After seeing that film Michelle has never left my mind, even when she decided to abandon serious films and slum it romantic comedy hell for the remainder of the nineties. White Oleander gave us the greatness that is La Pfeiffer on top of her game and hopefully there's more coming but even if there isn't there'll always be moments like Stephanie Zinone singing 'Cool Rider' in Grease 2, Elvira coming down in the glass elevator in Scarface, Angela throwing the drink in her boss' face in Married to the Mob, Susie Diamond singing 'Makin' Whoopee' on top of that piano in that red dress in The Fabulous Baker Boys, Frankie baring all for Johnny, Countess Olenska meeting with Archer after all those years in The Age of Innocence and, of course, Catwoman licking Batman's face under the misletoe.
The 29th is La Pfeiffer's birthday, so go out and rent one (or eleven) of her movies. You know its the right thing to do.
Happy Birthday, Michelle. May Halle Berry burn in the eternal fires of hell for tarnishing the good name of Catwoman.
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