Sheila O'Malley Profile picture
Writer/Film critic: @ebertvoices, @filmcomment, @criterion, NY Times | @NYFCC | TCB!
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Nov 16, 2021 13 tweets 3 min read
It's so weird to get irritated at other peoples' enthusiasm. I've been dealing w/it since I was 5 - one of my 1st memories is being told to calm tf down - so I'm a hardened veteran. I just don't experience other peoples' enthusiasms w/anything other than appreciation. Weirdos. Imagine being like: "wow, you are posting a lot about a thing I have no interest in. How dare you." Imagine being a person like that. Soooo many people post all the time a/b things I have no interest in. I'm happy enthusiasm exists for them.
Nov 15, 2021 5 tweets 1 min read
Speaking of these two: here they are in Henry Jaglom's TRACKS, which you should see if you haven't. If I were in charge of the world, I would have organized a production of KING LEAR, where these two alternated the role of Lear and Lear's Fool. I spend my time dreaming up fictional theatre productions that I personally want to see. Send help.
May 2, 2021 14 tweets 5 min read
It's the birthday of the father of the power-chord and all-around rock 'n roll icon, Link Wray. A little thread. #LinkWray #BOTD First, we have to talk about "Rumble." "Rumble" (1958) was considered so dangerous that radio stations refused to play it. **"Rumble" is an instrumental**. In Twitter-ese: Let that sink in.
Jan 19, 2021 18 tweets 7 min read
“I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb… and I also know I’m not blonde.” – Dolly Parton. #BOTD ready for a thread. #DollyParton One of Dolly Parton's earliest singles (which she didn't write) was "Dumb Blonde." She knew going in who she was, what she wanted to look like, how she was perceived, and she was never anybody's fool about it. #DollyParton
Jan 18, 2021 5 tweets 3 min read
#BOTD I link to this on Archie Leach's b-day every year: an essay for a Film Preservation Blogathon back in 2011 - about Grant's character in NOTORIOUS - a character study, really - and how he plays it. "A fat-headed guy full of pain." sheilaomalley.com/?p=54702
Dec 29, 2020 13 tweets 8 min read
Just a little thread of some of the things I wrote on my own site in 2020. Yes, the site is a monster. I can't help it. I've been writing over there for 18 years. It's an oasis. For me anyway and hopefully for others! I interviewed Jennifer McCabe, Associate Professor at Lehman College in the Theatre Department (she also teaches at NYU) a/b the fascinating exercises she's developed to help solve common problems she saw w/her acting students. DEEP DIVE into PROCESS. sheilaomalley.com/?p=154648
Apr 29, 2020 16 tweets 7 min read
It's Willie Nelson's 87th bday. Born in 1933. Living legend. You ready for a thread? #WillieNelson “Ninety-nine percent of the world’s lovers are not with their first choice. That’s what makes the jukebox play.” – Willie Nelson.
Dec 12, 2019 14 tweets 3 min read
It's the great Teri Garr's birthday. Here she is dancing next to a smokin-hot Ann-Margret and Elvis in VIVA LAS VEGAS. She was in nine Elvis movies. As a background dancer. She was a background dancer in the legendary TAMI Show, gyrating around Marvin Gaye. Now obviously she went on to greater things, but I will pay tribute today to the section I call The Elvis Years.
Oct 31, 2019 4 tweets 2 min read
"I was just beautifying him, don’t you know. A thing of beauty, don’t you know. Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says." – James Joyce, ULYSSES. It's John Keats' birthday. Mr. Sensuous. Post on my site: sheilaomalley.com/?p=28818 The story of his epitaph is so interesting. Basically it would be like: I tell a friend what I want my epitaph to be. Let's say "Good friend, a loving sister and daughter" - I don't know, something like that, right? Then I die. My friend decides that life gave me a bum deal ...
Oct 30, 2019 17 tweets 3 min read
Halloween approaches. This is me and my friend Mitchell as Edie Sedgewick and Andy Warhol at a party in college. Some words on this party, because it was one for the books: I lived in a house off-campus. It was a gigantic rambling house, inhabited by 4 college students (this sounds like a novel by Donna Tartt) and slowly - over a period of months - the joint turned into a halfway house for every runaway teen in town.
Oct 30, 2019 7 tweets 2 min read
One of the most frightening maps in the world. Every known shipwreck around Sable Island. You can see why it's called the Graveyard of the Atlantic. I grew up in a fishing town, where SI has such a nasty reputation nobody even wants to say its name out loud. It's like "the Scottish play" to fishermen.
Oct 30, 2019 6 tweets 1 min read
Years ago, before the economy crashed I had a real actual job. We were bought by a gigantic company. I still have a pension plan with said company. Just got update: get $ in there in a lump sum (take the hit w/taxes) or wait for retirement. Retirement. HA. So I'm reading thru ... and I come across an absolutely absurd sentence that stopped me in my tracks. They list pros and cons for each choice. Under lump sum choice, one of the cons:
"You risk outliving your lump sum."
Oct 28, 2019 6 tweets 2 min read
Robert Evans, ladies and gentlemen. Post-Cotton-Club, in his wild memoir THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE. RIP. and his memo to FFC in re: Cotton Club and what was wrong with it (included in KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE) is a masterpiece of its kind - whether or not you agree/disagree with his critique. I learned a lot from studying that memo in my own life, just in re: story/structure/intent.
Oct 27, 2019 9 tweets 7 min read
For Sylvia Plath's birthday: my @FilmComment column about the new revelations in re: her passionate love of movies, revealed for the first time in full published correspondence (edited by @sylviaplathinfo and Karen V. Kukil): filmcomment.com/blog/present-t… @FilmComment @sylviaplathinfo I also wrote a post on my site about Plath. Like many, I discovered her in high school and have had a very complex relationship with her ever since. The full correspondence finally published was just the latest development (but WHAT a welcome development). sheilaomalley.com/?p=91103
Oct 26, 2019 19 tweets 6 min read
Since people seem to like my personal stories on here - I used to write long-form personal essays on my site (long before I started writing about film). I've had some success with some of them, so figured I'd share some links, if you're interested. Long-time readers of my site will roll their eyes like "yes, yes, we know about Window Boy and 74 Facts and that cup you stole that one time from a diner ..." lol But so much stuff is just buried in my gigantic archives (I started my blog in 2002) so I'll resurrect them.
Oct 24, 2019 8 tweets 4 min read
My new @FilmComment column is up. All about watching movies with an audience. Nothing quite like it. Anecdotes a-plenty. filmcomment.com/blog/present-t… @FilmComment Hopefully you can segue from Charles Manson up the chimney to Jeanne Dielman. Welcome to my world. This column was inspired by some thoughts I shared here a while back about Wolf of Wall Street and THAT SCENE.
Oct 24, 2019 32 tweets 6 min read
Many years and lifetimes ago, I was living - sort of? - in San Francisco, and in the process of a long-drawn-out breakup with a boyfriend - which ... I was so ready to be DONE w/ him but he was my first boyfriend so, you know, wild sobs, etc. In the middle of this was Halloween. He was fresh out of law school, and had gotten a job in a gigantic corporate law firm in San Francisco. So much for the dreams of being a public defender. (Unfair. He is now a public defender, and doing what he wants to do.) But at the time it was like a Faustian deal.
Oct 1, 2019 9 tweets 2 min read
Coming up on the anniversary of me going crazy. Or, one of the times. The Big One. 15 on the Richter scale. Which reminds me of a story. Member Window Boy? He is difficult to explain or describe which is why I have written about him so much. Anyway, our entire saga happened before I got diagnosed although - looking back - he clearly walked me through a couple "episodes." Without knowing what he was doing or what "it" was.
Oct 1, 2019 9 tweets 3 min read
Since we're now in October, here I am in the dingy railroad apartment where I spent my first 5 years, dressed up as a witch in a blonde plastic wig and an Irish knit sweater, knitted by my mother. My brother is a ghost. I mean, obviously a ghost. Either that or a novitiate.
Sep 30, 2019 4 tweets 2 min read
#BOTD Michael Powell. A while back, I interviewed Thelma Schoonmaker (she needs no introduction, not round these here parts) about the restoration of TALES OF HOFFMANN, which she supervised. She was so much fun to talk to! rogerebert.com/interviews/fro… The image of Martin Scorsese and George Romero basically doing a tug-of-war over the only existing print of TALES OF HOFFMANN - is so pleasing to me. "Hey George you done with it yet?" "No." "When will you be done with it?" "I don't know." They were both obsessed.
Sep 26, 2019 22 tweets 11 min read
My next "Present Tense" column is up at @FilmComment - Death scenes! Not "favorite" death scenes, but a discussion of the challenges of these scenes, and actors who do them well! Thx in advance for reading! filmcomment.com/blog/present-t… @FilmComment Because visual aids are part of the fun of linking to these: here are some of the death scenes I mentioned: Brian Blessed's absolutely UNREAL work in his death scene in I, CLAUDIUS. like, wtf dude, way to set the bar.