I obviously didn't plan for two celebrity death posts in a row, but no way could I ignore the passing of Anne Heche. I've been a big fan since Walking and Talking, a lovable little indie film starring actors who were mostly unknown at the time (Anne Heche, Catherine Keener, Liev Schreiber, Todd Field) who all went on to bigger careers. For me, W&T was one of those movies that came along at just the right time in my life, and it was so funny and true and I connected with it so deeply that I felt like it was made just for me. I think most people have a movie that's like that for them, and Walking and Talking was mine.
Although Amelia (Catherine Keener) is the one I related to back in the day--mostly for her hot mess of a love life--Anne Heche is equally fabulous as Amelia's neurotic best friend, Laura.
Anne is brilliant throughout, particularly the bit where she reacts to her fiance's....gift. The whole scene is so bizarre and hilarious that I won't spoil it by revealing too much.
The Walking and Talking soundtrack is perfection. Not only does it feature Billy Bragg and Liz Phair, it also introduced me to artists I probably wouldn't have discovered otherwise, like The Sea and Cake, Frente, Pal Shazar, and Green House 27.
Speaking of Liz Phair, the use of her excellent and underappreciated song "Go West" in the scene where Amelia stalks Bill the video store clerk is E V E R Y T H I N G.
"Look at his legs. Look how they walk."
Walking and Talking must be one of those films that the studio had trouble marketing. The Roku description is downright inaccurate: "Neuroses and angst fill Manhattan yuppie best friends on the eve of one's wedding." Yuppies? Uh, not really. And the story doesn't take place on the eve of Laura's wedding, the bulk of it happens a few months beforehand. The writeup on the DVD box is even worse, making W&T out to be a generic zany romcom of the variety that Ashton Kutcher used to star in: "There are good dates, bad dates, and no dates. Wild fantasies. Long-distance phone sex. And an outrageous search for Mr. Right that turns up every oddball imaginable!" Okay, none of that happens, apart from the "long-distance phone sex," and that's an offscreen subplot involving Amelia's ex Andrew (Liev Schreiber). I don't know who shit out that synopsis, but he didn't watch the movie. And yeah, I suspect it was a guy who wrote that. Just a hunch. Whatever. Basically, don't trust any "official" descriptions of the movie, because they all seem to be bullshit.
It's funny that I've always seen Anne Heche as this '90s indie movie queen, a la Parker Posey. The fact is, Heche's only indie movies from that era were Walking and Talking and a 1995 film she starred in called Pie in the Sky. I remember renting that one with some girlfriends for a movie night back in the day, which is a ritual I so dearly miss. My favorite thing to do back then was to grab a few friends, pick up some tapes at the video store, order Thai carryout and watch movies. I mean, I know we have Netflix and Prime and everything else now, but I think we can all agree that it's just not the same. Anyway, I remember all of us enjoying Pie in the Sky, an off-beat little flick about a traffic-obsessed 20-something dude (Josh Charles) trying to land his dream job as a helicopter traffic reporter in L.A. while pursuing a romance with an avant-garde dancer played by Heche. I recently discovered the full movie on YouTube while I was laid up with COVID, and gave it another look.
While PitS has held up well and is quite charming, it unfortunately features that lazy trope that panicking screenwriters often toss in at the last minute: "WHAT? You mean to tell me that (love interest) is on the way to the airport right this second to start a new life in New York/Paris/Australia/Timbuktu? Follow that taxi!" (Cue quirky song by Cowboy Junkies/Rusted Root/The Lumineers/et cetera).
Although Heche had some high profile roles in the late '90s in Wag the Dog and Donnie Brasco, I feel like she didn't become known by the public until she was revealed as Ellen Degeneres's real-life girlfriend (which was in 1997, according to Wikipedia). After becoming famous for her personal life, her career picked up and she landed starring roles in major movies like the fun popcorn comedy Six Days Seven Nights and dramas like Return To Paradise and Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake.
But then she and Ellen broke up and then...then came that batshit incident where Anne was found wandering in the California desert, knocking on random stranger's doors and claiming to be a space alien searching for the mothership to take her to heaven. When I read about it at the time I just thought, "Hmm, bad acid trip?" Although I think the official story ended up being that Heche was suffering from dehydration and/or nervous exhaustion. You know, the usual crap that a celebrity's PR people will fart out when their client has an embarrassing public meltdown.
It's weird because in my mind I'd conflated a lot of those events. I was thinking that Anne Heche started dating Ellen Degeneres around the same time she was in that Harrison Ford movie, then like a month or two later came the Ellen breakup and the-wandering-in-the-desert episode, and then shortly after that Heche did the ill-advised "Celestia" interview and the press junket for her memoir, Call Me Crazy. According to Wikipedia however, all of that took place over a period of several years, between 1997 and 2001.
In fact, it was 2001 (like a week before 9/11) when Anne did that infamous Baba Wawa interview where she spoke in tongues (Heche, not Walters--though that would've been hilarious) and claimed that she had an alter ego, "Celestia," who was a goddess in a parallel universe. I think she also said that she used to think Jesus was her brother? Or maybe that she was Jesus? I can't recall exactly, but I know Jesus was involved somehow.
I remember watching the interview when it aired and just thinking, "Oh gurl, NO!" I hated that "my" actress from my favorite little indie chick flick was doing this to herself. I mean, I didn't give a shit about Anne Heche's personal life; I just loved her work and I was really pulling for her. I wanted her to have the career she deserved, and I was convinced that her wackadoodle behavior would surely torpedo any future prospects.
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| Note: pretty sure this was shot at the loft where they interviewed me and my British cohorts in our 20/20 interview back in 2012. (I always get excited when I recognize "our" loft in ABC interviews.) |
But apparently I was wrong, because Anne Heche seemed to bounce back just fine, working steadily and--according to her IMDB page--completing over 50 projects between 2001 and 2021.
I think it's a testament not only to Anne's talent and versatility as an actor, but also to how well-liked she seemed to be in the industry. After her death earlier this month, Emily Bergl was quoted as saying, "Anne was not only a genius, but one of the most astoundingly focused and prepared actors I ever worked with.....All day, scene after scene, her work would be technically flawless, and yet always remained spontaneous. I don't think she was capable of phoning it in. And then she would do it all again the next day."
I'm not interested in rehashing the gory details of Anne Heche's car crash and death earlier this month. It's too sad and too sordid. I just hope that in time she's remembered less for her personal life and more for her work, because she truly was a gifted actress.
I'm closing with my favorite track from Walking and Talking, which will always be the quintessential Anne Heche movie in my mind. I feel like this song is appropriate, since the lyrics describe a tempestuous relationship with a funny, free-spirited, eccentric woman....kinda like our gurl.
Nice summation of Anne and her work from The Guardian.
