The Arthropologist

Getting to be Molly Ivins, a liberal girl's dream: Who doesn't want to kick assand beat down Shrub?

Sara Gaston as Molly Ivins
Photo by Kaitlyn Walker
Molly Ivins
George W. Bush or "Shrub" as Molly Ivins called him.

Girls on the left, like me, all wanted to be Molly Ivins. The lady had first rate, Grade A, no nonsense sass. Her theatrical presence was the stuff of legends. She was a one-woman show. Now, she is one.

Main Street Theater (MST) is running Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, which opens Thursday night and runs through July 1, at the Chelsea Market location. The woman who coined President George W. Bush's most beloved nickname, "shrub," had a lot to say in her brief 62 years on earth, and playwrights Margaret and Allison Engel do their best to get her best stuff in during the 75-minute play.

Sara Gaston gets to be Ivins. She is well known to Houston audiences in her many roles with MST and the Alley Theatre. She's appeared in film and TV, and appears on the web series Behind Closed Doors.

Gaston visited with me about living my dream — getting to be Molly.

CultureMap: When you found out you got this part, what was your next move?

Sara Gaston: I was offered the role several months before we were to begin rehearsal so mostly I waffled back and forth between being excited and being terrified! About two weeks before rehearsals started, I began to commit the lines to memory and started to do research in earnest.

CM: Where you a fan during Molly's life?

SG: I had heard of her, but really knew nothing about her until this process. Now I’m a huge fan. It’s a huge thrill to get to say these words.

CM: If you were new to her career, how did you catch up?

SG: Fortunately, the play does a great job of taking us on that journey. I also watched videos, read articles online, looked up pictures and got a couple of books for reference material. Patti Bean, our director, was also a great resource. Sharing what we had learned was a big part of the early rehearsal process.

CM: One woman shows that try to capture a life aren't easy to pull off. The dramatic arc can feel strained, because there is just so much to convey in one evening. And, with a life as large as Ivin's, that's no small task. What's your approach to the material?

SG: I kept reminding myself that this isn’t a biopic — it’s a piece of theater. Our job is to capture her spirit, because there’s no way to cover everything that made her incredible. I’ve been sort of marinating myself in her world for the last several weeks.

CM: How do you think the Engel sisters managed to condense a life into 75 minutes?

SG: I have no idea how they did it, but they did an amazing job. I feel that they really capture the essence of who she was as a person and not just as a political voice. People who aren’t familiar with her will really get to know her. I hope those people who do already know her will feel like they are catching up with an old friend.

CM: Ivins did have a way of talking that made us feel as if she was talking directly to us. As an actor, what's the challenge for you?

SG: I really wanted to avoid trying to focus on doing an impersonation of her and getting caught up in mannerisms, faces, things like that. I’m not her, but I can try to do her spirit justice.

CM: This is a political piece, there's no getting around that. The lady grew up with "Shrub" (George W. Bush), and pretty much skewered him his entire career. Did you have any issue with Ivins' politics to get around?

SG: From what I’ve learned, not at all. I’d say we have very similar viewpoints.

CM: The powerhouse Kathleen Turner played this role, and she is a brassy dame to begin with. Now, it's your turn. What's really fun about being Molly?

SG: Getting to say what you think! We get really caught up in being diplomatic — be nice, don’t burn bridges! It’s the sort of thing you’d like to say, but you edit yourself. Molly just let it fly. God bless her.

CM: Aside from this big, fat, fabulous role, what other role have you played that really made an impact on your life, and why?

SG: It's hard to pick one. Whenever you really tackle a role, that character begins to creep into your life and leaves a mark. And that's happened to me a lot of times. Recently, I played Mary Henley in an independent film based on the true story of a Houston serial killer. She was the mother of one of the 'apprentices' to the killer.

Going to that place, where, as a mother, you look at the person who was once your tiny baby and see a killer in his place, that was a really dark place.

CM: What to do you do when you are not preparing for a role?

SG: I coach actors. I love it because I get to share something I'm really passionate about. It's so rewarding to help an actor with a breakthrough, or guide them as they try to navigate this crazy business.

Sadly, I'm a terrible theater-goer. If I'm not in a play, I rarely go to the theater. When I need a break, I love to read — it's great to climb into another world.

Enjoy Molly Ivins on InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse:

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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