Cine-Trash

The Scarlet Letter

by William Ham
illustration by Michael Corcoran

I’m starting to wonder if I should change the name of this column to Demi-Trash. Demi Moore is the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, and has earned her coin by perfecting a screen persona likely to endure at least as long as the warranty on her chest, an all-purpose characterization that suits her regardless of time, place, or setting – the self-empowering feminist icon, openly defiant of the constrictions imposed on her by both the oppressive masculocracy and those damn clothes. (She reportedly shaved her head for her next film, G.I. Jane, because that’s the only skin on her body she hadn’t shown off yet.) So who better to portray American literature’s most legendary Impuritan, Hester Prynne, than she? Well, try just about every other actress this side of Sybil Danning. But that didn’t stop Rollo Joffe from casting Mrs. Willis in this epic mistake, “freely adapted” from Nate Hawthorne’s tenth-grade-English classic (Wait… does that mean there wasn’t a scene in the novel where the mute maidservant masturbates with a candle in the washtub? Just goes to show that there’s no great book that can’t stand a little improvement). Granted, Demi’s not the only one who goes starketh in this flick – we get to see Gary Oldman, as Reverend Dimmesdale, showing off his holy equipment in a stream (Oldman, Keitel, Rourke… are there any good-looking male actors who show off their goodies on the silver screen these days?). As a bonus, we get to see Robert Duvall running around with a dead deer on his head (just like in Tender Mercies), some of the dumbest directorial dramatics in film history (Joffe obviously couldn’t decide which take to use for Oldman’s big sermon, so he used both at the same time), and, of course, a happy ending (studio executive: “Yeah, Rollie, that whole A-burned-on-the-chest thing tested poorly in Dubuque. Lighten it up a touch, ‘kay?”). But, in the end, none of that matters in the face of Demi parading her oft-paraded assets around, which is, after all, the point of her nowadays. I’m a little surprised they didn’t sew a “T” to go along with the “A.” You know, truth in packaging and all.