September 21, 2006

"There may come a time when a lass needs a lawyer..."

Don't you wish you ended up with $15 million worth of jewelry to auction off when the relationship crashed?
Ms. Barkin said the marriage was founded on genuine affection. “I loved Ronald Perelman,’’ she said. “I can say that unequivocally.’’ Mr. Perelman, she suggested, had struck a cooler bargain.

In his mind, she said, “I was an accessory, being accessorized, the perfect one — age-appropriate, the mother of two children, successful in her own right.’’
Yes, well, apparently, she acquired some accessories too.

Get that ice, or else no dice.

ADDED: "I was an accessory, being accessorized." That really is a clever phrase, isn't it? Those accessories she acquired? They weren't really for her. They were add-ons to his accessory, that is, her. So he was really buying them for himself, like you might buy outfits for your Barbie doll. They aren't really for Barbie, they're for you. And I love the idea that she just happened to fall in love with a billionaire, while he was materialistic one. She had beauty and he had money. Don't you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? But, go ahead. Re-tell what is an old, old story. Try to make it new. And congratulations for getting the ice and getting a sympathetic write-up in the NYT.

16 comments:

chuck b. said...

Straight people and their sham marriages... Sigh. And they want to force the rest of us to accept their deranged values and perverted lifestyles.

chuck b. said...

Hey, Ann: this post rocks!

chuck b. said...

Get it? *Rocks*!

MadisonMan said...

David, love is blind. And cat, I'd guess she did.

The swag looks nice in the pictures. And Ms. Barkin sure did play the NYT for a sympathetic article!

Unknown said...

Ellen Barkin is a great actress. I first noticed the extraordinary range of her talents in a little film called Diner, where she played the emotionally abused wife of an anal retentive control freak husband. In one scene, he goes on a rant about his vaulted jazz collection of records, which of course he has arranged from A to Z. Unfortunately, while cleaning the house when he was gone, she had placed some albums back in his collection according to the name of the album rather than the artist. He has all the lines, while Ellen merely listens to him belittling her. Slowly, the smile on her face crumbles and she breaks down and cries. It's really more of a wimper. Right there, I said to myself: there's a real actor. It was quite a moving performance and struck a chord within me. This was long before her starring role with Al Pacino in Sea of Love.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said to Ernest Hemingway that the rich are different from you and me. Hemingway's cynical reply was, yeah, they got more money.
So, your post makes its point aptly in the Hemingway camp. But I would have to say that Barkin continues to be one of the best actors of her generation, even though she has never vaulted into the status of a superstar. I'm hoping that the money, which she makes from the auction of her jewelry from her marriage to fund an independent film production company, allows her to find right film projections to explore her talents as an actor.
Ann, we're all in the gutter, as Oscar Wilde observed, but some of us are looking at the stars.

knox said...

Interviews, Ms. Barkin said, are an exercise in self-examination.

barf

The Drill SGT said...

some pretty ugly jewels.

she's a well preserved 52

goesh said...

She would look darn sassy with that emerald piece contrasting with her blonde hair. Ellen always reminded me for some reason of a farm woman I knew years ago named Ruby - best damned tractor and farm machinery operator for many miles around. Flax in particular, being a short-stemmed, somewhat brittle plant, would easily flatten in a strong wind. When the men would fail to get a downed flax field swathed for harvest,invariably they would say, "go get Ruby". Secretly some men resented her talent, but they didn't dare express it for fear of being laughed at. Farmers, like Ms. Ellen, tend to be a practical lot.

JorgXMcKie said...

'Girls grow old while men grow cold, and we all lose our charms in the end."



dzzayctk: the sound of a divorce.

knox said...

But anyone who bought those beads is okay by me. I find her charming.


that'd be "him," then

Revenant said...

How did she not see he was shallow.

In my experience, the most common skill among actors and actresses is the ability to convince themselves that they are loved and appreciated for their talents and personality. It is hard to be subject to continuous criticism -- and all actors are -- if you don't have an ego the size of Alaska.

And actually, Barkin's conviction that a billionaire looking for nothing more than an "accessory" would pick a 50-year-old actress in the twilight of her career is probably another manifestation of ego. Let's be honest -- compared to the rest of the population of beautiful, famous women willing to marry for money, Barkin isn't much of a catch.

tiggeril said...

She's a doofus for marrying him, but god, I love emeralds.

JorgXMcKie said...

Gotta admit, emeralds are more 'fun' and prettier than diamonds. I hope someday I can afford a nice one for my blonde wife. 'Course, I didn't marry her for an accessory.

( ;->=

Jennifer said...

I really dig Ellen Barkin. She's classy, intelligent and so stylish. And rumored to be finding comfort in George Clooney's arms. Not a bad spot to be.

An accessory being accessorized is quite clever. I may just be buying the story hook, line and sinker but she really does seem to be quite shaken by the breakup. Or she did in Vogue last month.

MDIJim said...

Hey thanks for the link to all those IMDB lines. "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" seems wittier than most movies made in the last ten years or so. Did they write such great diologue because they couldn't do spectacular special effects and were prohibited from showing much skin?

Ann Althouse said...

cokaygne, it was originally a book (by the extremely clever Anita Loos) and then a stage musical. But many people think Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell side-by-side is about as special as an effect can get.