The woman is the real painter, the husband the phony. Yet there's so much wrong with this image. First, you don't paint with the canvas in a frame. Second, a painter's palette is held with a thumb through the hole. I'm seeing a woman awkwardly posing as an artist, looking back after a first attempt as if to say "Like this?"
Anyway, here's a June 1986 article in People magazine about Margaret's lawsuit against her ex-husband:
Margaret, 58, and Walter, 70, hadn't laid eyes on each other for nearly 20 years when they walked into federal court in Honolulu last month. They proceeded to have at it in an often heated 3½-week trial. Margaret acknowledged that she had gone along with Walter's claims during their marriage, but only because he threatened to kill her and her daughter by a prior marriage if she revealed the truth. At the behest of her attorney, Margaret sat before the jurors and in 53 minutes painted a small boy's face with those unmistakable outsize orbs. The painting, Exhibit 224 of the trial, may be her greatest artistic triumph.I hope the movie makes Walter very sympathetic. His point of view is more interesting narratively, don't you think? If he's just a brute, like Ike Turner in "What's Love Got to Do With It?," I predict it will be unwatchable.
Challenged by Margaret's attorneys to show the jury his stuff, Walter, who acted as his own lawyer, pleaded that he was taking medication for a painfully injured shoulder and declined to put brush to canvas.
Margaret brought in examples of her work beginning with a large-eyed child she had painted when she was a child herself, at age 11. She got into really big eyes while painting her brown-eyed infant daughter, Jane (now 36), and developed the sad-eyed genre as she herself grew more and more miserable in her marriage to Walter. She and the jurors saw the case eye-to-eye. They awarded her $4 million for the emotional distress and damaged reputation she had suffered because of Walter's false statements.
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If he's just a brute, like Ike Turner in "What's Love Got to Do With It?," I predict it will be unwatchable.
Yes, Professor, but if the movie doesn't paint him as a one-dimensional brute then the movie will never be made. And movies not made are by definition unwatchable.
I can't imagine seeing this movie when I can see Unbroken instead.
You might paint a framed piece to touch it up, and you can hold a palette however you darn well want to.
Or perhaps the still image is designed to imply that she was a nit-wit.
She's also painting in a spotless white blouse. Horrors!
The film open on December 25 and is said by Wikipedia "to tell the story of their heated divorce battle."
It's likely to be an indictment of a certain decade: "Walter Keane became a national celebrity and talk show fixture in the 1950s after he pioneered the mass production of prints of big-eyed kids, and used his marketing savvy to sell them cheaply in hardware stores and gas stations across the country."
Merry Christmas!
I'll likely be at Into the Woods but I might instead go see Angelina Jolie murderously direct Unbroken: "Zamperini, played by Jack O'Connell, died in July at 97, having been shown the film by Jolie in a hospital on her laptop."
I like the psychological warfare angle of The Interview. Make Kim Jong-un paranoid that anyone he can glom onto from the West might be there to kill him.
Note to Althouse: How could you fail to comment that in the photo Amy Adams is (affectionately?) wearing a man's shirt, presumably the shirt of her sadistic, abusive husband who she is looking back at for approval?
"Note to Althouse: How could you fail to comment that in the photo Amy Adams is (affectionately?) wearing a man's shirt, presumably the shirt of her sadistic, abusive husband who she is looking back at for approval?"
I decided not to nitpick, but the truth is, wearing your husband's old shirt would be the most natural approach to finding a smock. When I painted in high school, I wore one of my father's white shirts. I think that's an accurate detail.
If she is looking back like that at her husband, it would suggest that she isn't in fact the real artist, but I don't think that's the storyline they'll be using.
Margaret is still alive, and it's a woman's story.
I just hope that Walter is a three-dimensionally drawn and tragic figure.
I'm looking forward to this movie as well. I just read Adam Parfrey's book about the Keanes. Although Margaret's paintings are kitsch, they are well done and obviously personal to her. There is nothing cynical or insincere about them. They have great mood and are pleasing to look at. I can understand their popularity.
Soon to follow if this movie goes big:
The Poker Playing Dogs story
&
Elvis on Black Velvet.
Don't say you weren't warned.
Margaret Keane is a year older than myself. I would have sworn that the first place I saw the Big Eyes motif was in my pediatrician's office, and I was about 12 years of age.
We know that Waltz can play a bad guy to both malevolent and comic effect. Perhaps Margaret was the artist but Walter was the entrepreneur. That could be an interesting movie.
madAsHell said...
Margaret Keane is a year older than myself. I would have sworn that the first place I saw the Big Eyes motif was in my pediatrician's office, and I was about 12 years of age.
9/7/14, 1:45 PM
You're 86? Or are you saying you're a year younger than she was when the article was written in 1986?
I think that pictures of big-eyed waifs in the early part of WWII would have had a whole different feel to them than they did in the 1960s.
What's "three dimensionally drawn and tragic" or "sympathetic" about this guy?
A jury found he took credit for another person's talent and then threatened to kill her and her child if she said anything about it.
Clue me in, because I don't get it. No matter how much lipstick you put on this pig, the bottom line is he's a pig. The movie is likely unwatchable tripe no matter what, and changing the story simply makes it another sort of unwatchable tripe.
"Perhaps Margaret was the artist but Walter was the entrepreneur. That could be an interesting movie."
That's exactly the case.
Maybe they can get Liam Neeson as the husband...
"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my lawsuit go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."
The woman is the real painter, the husband the phony. Yet there's so much wrong with this image. First, you don't paint with the canvas in a frame. Second, a painter's palette is held with a thumb through the hole. I'm seeing a woman awkwardly posing as an artist, looking back after a first attempt as if to say "Like this?"
See. Those years as a fine arts major were not a waste after all.
The woman is the real painter, the husband the phony. Yet there's so much wrong with this image. First, you don't paint with the canvas in a frame. Second, a painter's palette is held with a thumb through the hole. I'm seeing a woman awkwardly posing as an artist, looking back after a first attempt as if to say "Like this?"
Just another example of Hollyweird never getting the little details right.
It's funny how freaky those big eyes are. I instantly grasp why Tim Burton is drawn to this material. He likes innocent and he likes horror.
Normally big eyes would make you sympathetic. That's why E.T. is the most lovable alien ever. Make the eyes bigger!
But notice how human his eyes are. They're shaped exactly like a human being's eyes. So we see the humanity in E.T. These kids are like the opposite of E.T. The eyes are so black and distorted, the kids don't seem like kids. They're kid-monsters.
To me that's far more interesting than any hostile divorce or legal battle. What the hell inspired this haunted child art? Why is she obsessively painting these harsh and creepy kids?
"I'm looking forward to this movie as well. I just read Adam Parfrey's book about the Keanes. Although Margaret's paintings are kitsch, they are well done and obviously personal to her. There is nothing cynical or insincere about them. They have great mood and are pleasing to look at. I can understand their popularity."
I usually disagree with Robert, but this time he's gone absolutely batshit.
What about big-eyed kitten paintings? I don't remember the big-eyed kids at all.
I hope the movie makes Walter very sympathetic. His point of view is more interesting narratively, don't you think? If he's just a brute, like Ike Turner in "What's Love Got to Do With It?," I predict it will be unwatchable.
It's Tim Burton, therefore it will be unwatchable no matter how the characters are presented.
The first principle of the Quaestor Academy of Motion Picture Direction is COMB YOUR DAMNED HAIR.
Burton has been in defiance of the first principle since forever, ergo his movies stink. Ce can still rescue something from a career that peaked with Edward Scissorhands if he would adhere to the second principle.
The second principle is IF YOU CAN'T COMB YOUR DAMNED HAIR, SHAVE IT OFF AND PRETEND YOU'RE ERICH VON STROHEIM OR OTTO PREMINGER.
They [i.e. those revolting big-eyed kiddies pics] have great mood and are pleasing to look at. I can understand their popularity.
A sign of the fall of civilization. Look what the big-eyed style has done to Japan: It's gotten so that a decent girl can't walk down the street in her school uniform without giving some middle-aged manga maniac a hard-on.
Maybe the husband was the one with the genius for promoting and publicizing the art. That's probably the rarer gift......If Margaret Keane becomes some kind of feminist cause célèbre my head will explode.
"Maybe the husband was the one with the genius for promoting and publicizing the art."
Yes. That's exactly the case.
Walter Keane would make an interesting subject for a movie if they do it right.
They can make you like him by showing the zeal with which he promoted the art and turned what is a modest talent into an empire. They have to make the audience like him or they won't care about how his flaws led to his downfall.
He could have promoted the art and never claimed to be the artist. But even after the initial lie, why not (just in case) learn to paint these pictures? The woman who let him take credit would surely be willing to teach him to replicate her technique. Maybe he would never be much good but with instruction and practice, he (or anyone) should be able to make a passable effort.
I LOVE Amy Adams and didn't even notice she was holding a pallet. That does look awkward but she looks great!
Any one else rememb er the comic strip,"Dondi"
The original great big sad eye kid.
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