Real Big Glennergy
Fatal Attraction is my new comfort watch
Content warning: today’s post talks about suicide and self-harm in the context of the 1987 film Fatal Attraction. Also there are a lot of spoilers, so be warned!
This may surprise you if the only thing you know about me is my books, but I love horror. Or I guess I should say I used to love horror. In my pre-kid days, although there were certain categories of horror I avoided (more on that in a future post!), I was pretty much always down to watch a good scary movie. But as soon as I got pregnant with my son, things changed. I no longer had any desire to watch anything scary, and that continued once he was born. In 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write, Sarah Ruhl wrote that it felt sometimes like her children were annihilating her: “Finally I came to the thought: all right, then, annihilate me. That other self was a fiction anyhow.” Perhaps that’s what had happened; perhaps the horror-loving Kerry was nothing but a fiction.
But it turns out she wasn’t annihilated after all. She was simply lying dormant all along, much like Glenn Close in the bath, waiting for her moment to leap up and terrify me. But these days, my taste in scary movies is different…honestly, I don’t want anything that scary. And that’s where my favorite kind of horror film comes in: Scary Movies for People Who Don’t Want Anything That Scary.
I previously explored this genre with Sleeping With the Enemy. I suppose both SWTE and today’s film could correctly be classified as thrillers, not horror films, but is there anything scarier than a stalker who will stop at nothing? No! There isn’t!
Fatal Attraction flips the script, though, by making the stalker a woman. And what a woman she is. The only things I knew going into Fatal Attraction were the bunny boiling scene and “I’m not going to be IGNORED, Dan!”
Also, I recently watched the movie Do Revenge, which I would highly recommend (a surprise for me, since I’ve finally accepted that teen movies are no longer my jam now that I’m Teen Movie Parent Age). The characters talk about having “Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction Energy,” also known as Glennergy. That’s the perfect way to describe it. Glenn Close, who wasn’t even supposed to get this part because no one thought she was right for it, is the only person who could’ve made this character iconic, believable, and…occasionally sympathetic! I mean, her actions might be a little extreme (again, the bunny boiling), but she’s not wrong.
But let’s back up. Fatal Attraction is about Dan, played perfectly by Michael Douglas. You look at 1980s Michael Douglas and you immediately think, “Now here’s a man who is waiting for an opportunity to cheat on his wife.” And he sure is! Dan’s beautiful wife, Beth (played by Anne Archer), takes their daughter Ellen out of town for the weekend. Dan, a lawyer who wants to be partner, stays behind because he has a big-deal lawyer meeting. And that meeting is where he meets Alex, played by Glenn Close herself. Alex is an editor, she’s looking great, and she’s only the second woman Dan has spoken to since his wife rolled out of town.
Just call him Rupert Holmes because things start when they get caught in the rain. Alex suggests waiting the storm out in a bar, and bam. It’s happening. Dan is caught in the midst of an illicit weekend affair. Dan only needed the slightest breeze to knock him over; no man has ever been so quickly and easily persuaded to cheat on his beautiful wife. If Dan was in 2022, he’d be investing his entire life savings in bitcoin because a celebrity told him to on Twitter. That’s how impressionable this man is.
The next thing you know, they’re back at Alex’s apartment. I know nothing about New York City or publishing salaries in the 1980s, but her place is clearly supposed to read as the opposite of Dan’s. It’s large, white, echoe-y, kind of bare, and there are constantly homeless men building fires right outside of her door—this is in stark contrast to Dan’s cozy, plush apartment and the beautiful country home his family is considering buying. But Dan rejects comfort! He rejects safety! He rejects going home to let the dog out! That’s right, he stays out all night with Alex, which means their yellow lab is just stuck in Dan’s apartment all night?? It seems unfair. The dog never asked for any of this—being an unwitting partner in this affair or having to hold in his poop for an entire day. The entire time that Dan and Alex were having their torrid weekend affair, having sex in creative and inconvenient places (an elevator, a sink while the water is running), all I could think was…Dan, what about Quincy? What about Quincy?
(Don’t worry, despite the escalating tension and violence of this movie, Quincy is never harmed! The same cannot be said for other family pets.)
Eventually, Michael Douglas has to go home (but not before he brought Quincy over to hang out with Alex! He’s lucky Quincy doesn’t have the power of speech!), and Alex isn’t happy. Michael Douglas does the whole slimy man thing…we had an understanding, no strings, etc. And here’s where you get the first inkling that Alex isn’t going to go gentle into this good night (wherein the “good night” means “staying out of Dan’s life”). Because when she reaches up to give him a conciliatory good bye hug, she covers his face in blood. Because she slit her wrists.
Obviously, this is an upsetting scene. Dan stays the night with her to make sure she’s okay, but in the morning he’s like, “Okay, bye!!!” He’s ready to put his entire sordid weekend behind him. Yes, he was almost indirectly responsible for someone’s death. Yes, Quincy suffered. But now he’s ready to be a family man once again.
But Alex is like…not so fast.
Here are the things Alex does:
-Shows up at Dan’s office to apologize and try to get him to go see Madame Butterfly with her (for once in his life, he makes the right decision and says no, but it’s too late).
-Keeps calling his office until he has his secretary stop taking her calls.
-Tells him she’s pregnant and she plans on keeping the baby.
-Calls him at home.
-Shows up at his home, telling his wife that she’s interested in their apartment!!!
-Stands outside his beautiful new country home, watches his idyllic family life, and barfs.
-Pours acid all over his car.
-Sends him a cassette tape that’s just her being like, “Dan, you messed up and I’m not leaving you alone, sorry!”
-Oh yeah, breaks into their house while they’re gone, kills their pet rabbit, and boils it (unsure about the order of this…I feel like you’d have to kill the rabbit before boiling, but I’m certainly not going to research the subject).
-Briefly kidnaps his daughter and takes her on a rollercoaster??
Dan really has no choice but to tell Beth what’s going on (when your new pet ends up dead/boiled, you have some explaining to do). This is the moment when I told my husband that if he ever has a weekend affair with Glenn Close, I’d really prefer he tells me about it before she starts terrorizing the entire family. Also, please let the dogs out! I will not forgive him but at least I’ll understand/move somewhere with better security. He seemed very adamant that this won’t happen, but hope for the best, plan for the worst is what I always say.
Naturally, Dan’s wife doesn’t react well. And who can blame her? The genius of this movie is that, well…Dan sucks! The dude cheated on his wife. He has this perfect, comfortable life…a weird bestie at work who, along with his wife, goes on fun bowling double dates with Dan and Beth. A cute daughter with a severe haircut. A wife who couldn’t be lovelier. Again, Quincy the dog. And yet he risks throwing it all away for one exciting, dangerous weekend of sex in a sink. He probably has so many sinks in that new country home. He should’ve had sink sex at home!
And as for Alex…listen, I’m not advocating for stalking and terrorizing a family. Personally, I would never boil a bunny (what can I say, I’m an animal advocate!). But does she kind of have a point? Well, yeah! Dan gets her pregnant, offers to pay for an abortion, but then wants to ignore her when she says she’s keeping the baby because she’s 36 and it might be her last chance. At one point, she says something to the effect of “you want to throw me away like I’m trash.” And he does. He thinks he can get away with something, but the entire film is about that something (Alex, a possible child) catching up with him. Even through it’s stressful as hell, I love the whole “a man screws up in the beginning and the entire book/movie is about that transgression ruining his life” plot, which is also seen in Stephen King’s Thinner and Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot. It’s so satisfying to watch a guy do something bad and then suffer consequences!
Of course, the real problem here is that a lot of other people (…and pets) are suffering the consequences. And Alex is clearly suffering, too. Watching her swing back and forth between a chill “cool girl” and someone desperate to hold onto Dan, it seems clear that she must have some sort of mental illness. Clearly she’s suicidal, and she harms herself just as much as she harms others. Glenn Close expressed some regret about how her role enforced negative stereotypes of people with mental health issues (although Glenn also spoke with multiple psychologists to pin down her character, even going so far as creating an abusive past for Alex…the woman is nothing if not dedicated to her craft!). It’s hard for me to fault this film for what it inspired (a lot of movies/jokes/tropes about “psychotic” women or exes), even as I can imagine a very unimaginative bro watching Fatal Attraction and simply taking away the message Bitches Be Crazy!
I think the reason why this movie works is because it’s so complex and interesting. Alex is doing the wrong things, but she’s a little bit sympathetic. Dan is trying to avoid responsibility for his unborn child. That’s pretty bad! He’s not a hero. And even though I was constantly yelling “this man is useless!” at the screen, I was still sucked into his increasing panic. And what about his sweet family?? AND QUINCY? Everyone involved in this movie is so interesting and well-acted that it never becomes just a simple “a murderous ex won’t leave this family alone” movie.
Even though this is a spoiler-full newsletter, I won’t totally describe the ending other than to say that it’s exciting and dramatic and totally satisfying. But it almost didn’t happen! There’s a whole other alternate ending that you can watch on YouTube that’s decidedly more downbeat (I mean, extremely downbeat…it made me feel really bad! I won’t link it because it was pretty disturbing but it’s easily Google-able). It also brings in at least three plot elements/images/callbacks from earlier in the film that aren’t mentioned at all in the final ending. It’s so funny to me that, when you change an ending in a film because it didn’t do well with test audiences, you’re just stuck with whatever references to that ending are in the rest of the film. Like, if I changed the ending to a book I could easily go back and take out anything in the rest of the book that affected that ending. But it’s not so easy in a movie! Now you’re stuck with a lingering shot of a knife that never comes back into play!
It sounds weird to say, given that this is a thriller, but I found Fatal Attraction extremely comforting. It looks great (bring back good movie lighting, please, somebody!), the actors are all top notch, it’s charmingly 80’s, and it’s cozy as hell. I recently started listening to the podcast With Gourley and Rust because my brother, Alex (no relation to the Glenn Close character), told me they were doing a series on what they call Yuppie Nightmare movies. Their episode on Fatal Attraction is really fun (there’s also an ep on Sleeping with the Enemy!), and their entire podcast hinges on coziness as it relates to horror films. An ideal podcast for me, and maybe for you!
That’s it for this week. I intended for this to come out on Monday, but my kid’s been sick since the weekend so we’ve just been chilling at home and watching kid appropriate movies. I saw Hocus Pocus for the first time (kid loved it, but it didn’t click for me, probably because I should’ve seen it as a child instead of a 36 year old!) and Hocus Pocus 2. Next week, I was going to write more about scary movies but then I watched Autumn in New York and now I can’t think of anything else! Winona deserved better than Richard Gere!!! And yet…I loved every second of this film. It’s streaming on Amazon Prime if you want to be prepared (there’s a partially obscured sex scene that made me laugh out loud). More next week!