I love Barbra Streisand.
Her autobiography, My Name is Barbra, is a whopping 970 pages, and includes multiple passages of her thirsting over Marlon Brando. After seeing Brando in Guys and Dolls (1955), Streisand writes that she thought he was “the most gorgeous, the most brilliant, the most brilliant human being on Earth!” In the 1960s, as Streisand’s fame grew, she and Brando began to run into each other at various events. At a civil rights benefit, Brando came up to Streisand, started kissing her back, and invited her to have sex with him. She refused and chastised him for “destroying [her] fantasy.” According to Streisand, Brando repeatedly propositioned her throughout the 1960s and, each time, Streisand turned him down.
I’ve actually never seen a bigger flex. If I turned down Marlon Brando during his second-hottest decade, I, too, would not shut the fuck up about it. Also, her telling him he’s “ruining her fantasy” by trying to hook up with her is such an incredible insight into female desire. Sometimes having a crush is way more pleasurable and fulfilling than the prospect of an actual encounter with the real, human man.
After Streisand turned Brando down, they became lifelong friends. In the 1970s, Brando watched Streisand’s movie The Way We Were (1973) for the second time, and Streisand reports that Brando called her up to tell her, “We should have done more when we were younger, fucked a lot, had children. Go kiss yourself in the mirror for me.” I’d need at least seven business days to recover from that phone call. My favorite maladjusted fantasy is that an extremely handsome guy I rejected calls me decades later to tell me his biggest regret is not being with me. And Streisand not only lived that, but got to brag about it in an almost 1,000 page book. Icon.
I’m also not surprised Brando was in his feelings after watching The Way We Were. The Way We Were is a weepy romantic drama that follows the (ultimately doomed) relationship between Katie Morosky (Streisand) and Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford) over the course of nearly thirty years. Listening to the song Streisand recorded for the film, “The Way We Were,” is enough to make anyone call the one that got away, especially if the one that got away is Streisand herself.
The Way We Were is one of my favorite movies. That’s likely because I watched it for the first time when I was nineteen, in the midst of a breakup with a very normal guy whom I thought was the love of my life.
Whenever I’m having Big Feelings, I can’t enjoy a piece of media unless I can map it onto my own life. That summer I was nineteen, I tried to watch the 1996 Michael Jordan classic Space Jam, and fell asleep twenty minutes in because I couldn’t figure out how to relate my breakup to the Looney Tunes trying to stop an alien invasion via basketball. I spent the rest of the summer going back to basics by listening to “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinéad O’Connor on repeat and rewatching The Way We Were. When I told a friend about this at the time, she said, “Do you think you’re maybe enjoying being heartbroken a little too much?”
While The Way We Were is very important to me due to my personal lore, I can also recognize that it is, in most ways, exceedingly mediocre.
The film starts in 1937 and ends sometime in the late 1960s, with the characters embroiled in enough world events that it feels almost Forrest Gumpian. Katie and Hubbell first meet in college, where Katie is an outspoken Marxist Jew and Hubbell is a WASP-y football player. Hubbell’s friends mock Katie for her political conviction, but Hubbell becomes interested in her and the two banter and bicker about Hubbell’s political apathy.
After college and WWII, the two reconnect, with a horrible scene in which Katie has sex with Hubbell while he’s seemingly asleep. This scene is … discomfiting to say the least, and played for laughs. In Streisand’s memoir, Streisand notes that the original script included a line before Katie and Hubbell have sex again the next day, where Hubbell says, “It’ll be better this time.” The line shows that Hubbell was, in fact, awake the night before, but that line was cut from the film, and makes this entire sequence extremely uncomfortable.
Katie and Hubbell end up dating and get married. Hubbell becomes a successful screenwriter in Hollywood, but gets caught up in the Hollywood blacklists due to Katie’s politics. They continue to fight about politics, and Hubbell has an affair with a woman they both knew in college.
Katie Morosky: Wouldn’t it be lovely if we were old? We’d have survived all this. Everything would be easy and uncomplicated, the way it was when we were young.
Hubbell Gardiner: Katie, it was never uncomplicated.
The couple eventually agree to separate, with Katie requesting only that Hubbell stay with her until their daughter is born. Hubbell agrees, then leaves Katie at the hospital immediately after the birth. The film ends when Hubbell and Katie run into each other years later, still broken up and clearly having moved on with new partners.
The film’s plot is a mess. The ultimate separation between Katie and Hubbell is never really explained, and ends up making Hubbell look like an uncaring asshole. Arthur Laurents, the author of the book on which the film is based, adapted the screenplay himself, and hated the director Sydney Pollack. Streisand puts it simply in her memoir: “The fact is, Sydney didn’t like Arthur … and Arthur didn’t like Sydney.” Laurents was reportedly “horrified” by the first cut of the film and deemed it a jumbled mess. Pollack recut the film, and the end result is, in my opinion, still a jumbled mess.
But The Way We Were succeeds largely because of Streisand. Her performance as Katie, an abrasive, neurotic activist, could have easily tipped over into caricature, but Streisand plays her as outwardly confident, but sensitive and insecure in her private life. Streisand’s performance makes it easy to see why Hubbell falls in love with Katie. Streisand also came up with the idea of casting Redford as Hubbell. Redford initially turned the role down, but Streisand backchanneled via Pollack to convince Redford to accept it. It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Redford as Hubbell, who would’ve likely been a bore in anyone else’s hands. Redford also wears a white knit turtleneck in this movie, and I’ve never stopped thinking about it (I’ve written about it before in this very newsletter).
Streisand and Redford’s performances and chemistry save the film. Pollack agreed, stating in an interview, “I think it is a picture that is severely flawed. And it is saved, really, by the two performances.” Both Streisand and Redford had other, “greater” career achievements. Streisand is incredible in Yentl (1983), a film which she also directed, co-wrote, and co-produced. Redford is excellent in plenty of movies, including Out of Africa (1985), which was also directed by Pollack. But their performances in The Way We Were are some of their best, to me.
Other Things
I need to discuss the Billie Eilish Rolling Stone interview. She talks about her sexuality in a very 22-year-old way, explaining, “I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand—until last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina.” Average bisexual woman.
Kylie Jenner might be pregnant with Timothée Chalamet’s baby. The evidence? Kylie wore an all-black tracksuit to a relative’s funeral, which resembles outfits she wore while pregnant with Stormi and Aire (formerly known as Wolf). If true, I’m so glad I’m not blocked by Club Chalamet on Twitter. Also, taking bets now on Kylie naming the baby “Chalet Chalamet.”
Chicago convenience store chain Foxtrot is going out of business. Please keep Chicago area girlbosses with [solidcore] memberships in your thoughts during these trying times.