#the thing is. everybody Knew it wasn’t a great idea… and everyone thought their codependency was a lot but like

[bright-and-burning]

extremely complicated breakup in the friend group and i just found out abt it a Week Later but omg i have to tell SOMEONE abt this bc it’s insane

like. S and J dated our sophomore and junior years when J and K were roommates. they were super codependent and never spent time w anyone else or alone, then bad breakup, mental health crisis involving hospital time, etc.

K and S start dating our senior year. J is deeply upset bc K and him were besties, roommates, like K witnessed everything go down, and he’s still going for S.

S has a job lined up in college town for after graduation, signs a lease and everything. K has a job lined up here in boston. S finds a job, breaks her lease and quits the old job, moves in with K (AND N AND R. two of our other friends from college). K and S are super codependent (i think i’ve seen this one beforeeee) but even worse bc they live together. every minute they aren’t at their respective jobs they are together. they do the same rec league sports, they cook together, they do all their hobbies together, and then at the end of the night they get in bed together. and when i say All Their Hobbies i mean ALL. and this i know for a fact bc i slept on their couch for three weeks.

they (K and S and N and R) just signed a lease renewal Last Month. just found out from a friend who doesn’t live with them (D) that K and S broke up bc “K doesn’t see a future with her” (oh Lordt)

now K is sleeping on people’s couches while S figures out if she wants to move back in w her parents or What. AND K is trying to get in on housing w Literally All of Our Friends

like. D (guy) and A (girl) live together rn (everyone assumes they’re dating bc of it it’s kind of funny), and bc we all got jobs at separate times everyone else lives alone which is Expensive. so D, A, C, and M had this plan to find a place closer to the city/on a transit line (so i can actually visit them!!!), only now K AND MAYBE N ALSO WANT TO GET IN ON THIS. D does NOT want to live with K bc he’s got a reputation from college (idk how much he’s changed) of being a hella messy roommate while also being a control freak (ok the need to be in charge is still true. i can confirm that).

this is. messy. and literally last week i was like i could never live like S and K i would commit arson after a month it would drive me nuts. and D was like we called it lowkey bc every time marriage was brought up in a group convo (there’s a running joke that M refuses to be the first to get married, there’s like three long term couples in our friend group so when couples come to visit it comes up as a half joke half serious thing yk) K’d like . freeze up and go blank like no “oh that’s a ways down the road” or “haha yeah someday” or whatever, just like straight up panic. which is odd for him cuz he’s always got jokes yk?

so. yeah holy fuck bruh. this is the second time an S break up has had reverberating impact on our friend group 😭😭😭 J only JUST managed to be in the same room as her THIS YEAR (and HE LIVES LIKE FIFTEEN HOURS AWAY so it wasn’t that big of an issue after we graduated !!!) but now we have This and we all live in the same city!!!! to say nothing about. LEASES!!!

[cinephiled-com]

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Interview: Mary Kay Place Delivers Powerhouse Performance in ‘Diane’

For Diane (Mary Kay Place), everyone else comes first. Generous but with little patience for self-pity, she spends her days checking in on sick friends, volunteering at her local soup kitchen, and trying valiantly to save her troubled, drug-addicted adult son (Jake Lacy) from himself. But beneath her relentless routine of self-sacrifice, Diane is fighting a desperate internal battle, haunted by a past she can’t forget and which threatens to tear her increasingly chaotic world apart. Built around an extraordinary, fearless performance from Mary Kay Place, the narrative film debut from Kent Jones is a profound, beautifully human portrait of a woman rifling through the wreckage of her life in search of redemption. Diane also features a stellar ensemble including Estelle Parsons, Andrea Martin, Joyce Van Patten, Deirdre O’Connell, Phyllis Somerville, and Glynnis O’Connor.

I have admired Mary Kay Place for many years, from her wonderful work on TV in shows like Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Big Love, and Lady Dynamite, to her performances in films such as The Big Chill, New York, New York, and I’ll See You in My Dreams. I sat down with Mary Kay Place in Hollywood to discuss this achingly poignant film.

Danny Miller: What an extraordinary performance, Mary Kay, and just remarkable that you’re in every scene. When you work on a role this intense, do you have to bring in some resonance from your own life?

Mary Kay Place: Oh, I think you do. When I made this film, my parents and grandparents had already passed away. I certainly understood that element and I related to the community aspect of the town that Diane lived in because that was like my grandparents’ towns. They were different sizes, but I remember that same kind of casserole exchange and people picking up each other up from doctor’s appointments and all that. My grandmother did that for a million of her friends. I really connected to that aspect and I think everybody’s got some addiction in their family history, too, as I do, so I could relate to the pain of that as well.

The story of you and your son in this film is so moving. That look in your eyes when we understand that you know what the son is saying isn’t true, but you’re just trying to find a way to move on and be hopeful while still trying to protect yourself.

Yes. I try to get him to see his own truth instead of being in denial. And I know that I’m codependent, but I’m just trying to cope as best I can.

It’s so interesting how your character longs to be in control and yet keeps having these moments that are almost like a surrender. Like, okay, this is the reality of what’s happening so I just have to deal with it and move on to the next thing.

Right, to the next item on the list to cross off.

I found this to be such an adult film because nothing is over-explained. It takes a while to figure out all the relationships and to uncover the baggage that each character has. I love that. Were you always on the same wavelength with writer/director Kent Jones about what Diane was going through or did you have to find your own place in understanding how she was moving through the world and things like how her guilt was affecting her relationships?

I definitely had to find my own place. I actually wrote a complete and total history of Diane from the time I was in high school to meeting my son’s father to that relationship with my cousin’s boyfriend, every detail of that. I also researched the closing of the GE plant in Pittsfield where Kent’s mother was from and all of the things that could have affected the people in this area.

I want to that as a novel! So you went into Diane’s back story even more than Kent did?

Oh yeah, Kent hasn’t even read what I wrote about her. I sent him an early draft but then kept working on it for weeks so I could really understand the character.

Wow, do you always do that when you play a part?

Yeah, if there’s any particular thing that has impacted my character in some way. Even if the audience doesn’t know what it is, I need to know because if it’s just some general idea, it doesn’t resonate in the body the same way. Like Diane running off with the cousin’s boyfriend. It was a moment of real spontaneity, maybe the first and only time I’d ever have that. I know why I did it but I also know I blame myself for my son’s addiction because my leaving was such a big deal in the family and everyone was scandalized.

There’s a lot there that I can relate to from my own family. I still feel like the emotions from the movie are in my cells even though I saw it a week ago. When you’re acting in something this intense, do you feel like those emotions enter your body?

Oh, absolutely. I remember reading something Jessica Lange wrote after she played Joan Crawford in that film a few years ago — that your body doesn’t know that you’re acting. And my body definitely did not know, I had a real physical thing that happened as a result of making this film, I got a physical illness from taking all of that in.

Whoa, how do you cope with that?

I started doing mindful meditation and other things to counteract how the body deals with the stress. Between this and doing the TV series Lady Dynamite, I honestly hadn’t work that intensely since I was doing Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman more than 40 years ago. I remember back then our schedule was so intense, recording that show five times a week, and I was also making films and recording albums. It affected my physically. I went into a depression in the early 1980s because I didn’t know how to book my time, and I didn’t know how to restore myself in between projects.

Interesting. I remember Patti LuPone talking about why she couldn’t do two very serious plays in a row, that’s why she does fun musicals like Anything Goes in between her more intense projects.

Right. I was offered this very deep, dark part right after doing this film and Lady Dynamite and I had to turn it down. Number one, there wasn’t enough time to properly prepare, but number two, my body wasn’t ready to go back to that place and I just knew it would not be good, I had to protect myself from that. So your question is very insightful, Danny, because it does take a toll. I think that’s why Heath Ledger is not alive today. He did drugs to counteract that stress. I think there needs to be some spiritual or psychological letting-go ritual after very creative work. I’m still trying to figure out how I can develop something like that because it’s a lot of intense energy in your central nervous system. That said, we had a lot of fun making the movie, there was a lot of laughing and it wasn’t a morose atmosphere on set. But we spent 16-hour days working and then as soon as work was over I had to prepare for the next day.

It’s hard to believe the entire movie was shot in 20 days.

Yeah, so there wasn’t really any time for hanging out and relaxing. It was all work all the time, but it was still fun and exciting.

Watching that ensemble of great actors was just thrilling. I loved that dinner table scene with all of those amazing actors such as Estelle Parson and Joyce Van Patten.

They were great, weren’t they? Estelle has amazing energy and is just titanium. I remember we were shooting a scene in the hospital at one in the morning and she was bouncing all over the place! And Joyce and Andrea Martin and Phyllis Summerville and Deirdre O’Connell as the cousin. So fabulous.

This film brought up so much stuff for me — so many family complexities that I could relate to, from dealing with mortality issues as I’m doing now to the mother leaving, as my mother did back in the day, to all the addiction stuff. What have the discussions been like after screenings?

Very interesting. A lot of younger people don’t really want to think about death. But for baby boomers, even if they’ve put off thinking about these things for years, they’re finding out that they have to deal with them now. Many people feel very connected to this story, and a lot more men than I thought would be.

I could certainly relate to Diane and see the areas in my life where I needed to look at things that I do.

Me, too, God knows. Especially that thinking where you get stuck on a loop of regret about something you’ve done in the past and you just can’t get off of it.

Diane is currently playing in select cities.