When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
I’m watching Me, Earl and the Dying Girl for the third time, okay fourth. I am in love with this young actor Thomas Mann. And the girl (Olivia Cooke) is the first since Ali McGraw who I don’t want to die. Usually, I’m like pull the fucking plug and take us all out of our misery.
What’s your favorite dead girl movie?
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Betsy Lerner 
Braveheart. If you’ve never watched the movie, it’s violent and bloody but the scenes with William Wallace and his wife will have you jerk crying. The one in the beginning and the one at the end. Especially the one at the end. She’s gone already, and he’s about to be, in a barbaric way (as you could only imagine it would be in the 12th or 13th century) and he turns his head and sees her. He tracks her with his eyes, and THE MUSIC is what makes it so haunting.
“What’s your favorite dead girl movie?”
I thought high and I thought low, but I think I don’t have one.
There is a favorite dead girls writer. She is Daphne Gottlieb, the Poet Laureate of the United States that Never Was and Never Will Be, where the adults are all adults, the educated are all educated, justice is more than a label slathered over a bureaucracy, and the true, the good, and the beautiful are not terms whose meaning has been hollowed out by relentless marketing.
She has written, among other things, “Pretty Much Dead,” “15 Ways to Stay Alive,” “Kissing Dead Girls,” and “Final Girl.”
I don’t know her and, no, I’m not receiving anything of any value to write this, other than the gentle, self-applied strokes to my ego that I get whenever I write anything.
Steel Magnolias.
Pot boiling over.
Baby on the floor crying.
Unconscious mother.
Every parents nightmare.
Later?
Your grown daughter and mother of your grand-baby passes away before your eyes.
Every mother’s nightmare.
LOVED that movie. Although as soon as the kid promises us she doesn’t die, I knew he wasn’t to be believed.
I saw Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw (who is more fabulous than ever) last month in Detroit in a touring production of the show “Love Letters.” SPOILER: She dies in this one, too. Broke my heart even more this time.
Lars and the Real Girl. So many people cared about poor little wheel chair bound Bianca — I think that was her name — and gradually accepted her for who she was because they cared so much about Lars. It seemed logical that people would be uncertain and concerned at first until they managed to become part of Lars’ world. Even with the knowledge that Bianca was who she was didn’t stop her funeral from being well attended. It’s a sad commentary that treating a mentally ill person with acceptance and compassion is such a radical notion.
Girl, Interrupted.
I was sad when Daisy died after Angelina bullied her.
Terms of Endearment. Yes, I wanted it to be over but that didn’t stop the (rare) tears. Still holds up. Jeff Daniels and Debra Winger have never been better since.
Oops. and there’s Debra two doors down.