There’s something that unites the recent documentaries “Fay” and “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes.” It’s not just that they’re both on HBO—“Fay” was released in July, while “Elizabeth Taylor” is set for August 3—or that they focus on the stories of legendary, Oscar-winning performers. Fay is, of course, Faye Dunaway, star of “Network” and “Chinatown,” while Elizabeth Taylor, one of the most media-haunted figures of the 20th century, needs virtually no introduction.
But what these films share is a poignant, sometimes painful, double longing. In the documentaries, Dunaway—still with us at 83, and recently interviewed for this film—and Taylor—who died in 2011 but whose “lost tapes” document a lengthy interrogation with journalist Richard Merryman in 1964—express doubt, anxiety, even shame about professional mistakes, illicit ventures, and the ways in which their private problems played out in public. The viewer empathizes with them, first because they are human, then because their way of expressing their feelings is so transcendent. This is the other longing at the heart of these documentaries: the sense that the culture is no longer capable of producing great actresses who are also stars who shine so brightly.
Both films are filled with cinematic sequences, and both give a sense of their subjects’ style. In Laurent Bouzereau’s “Fay,” Dunaway is at her best using a powerful sense of control to further shock the viewer as she takes stunning images. (The famous photo of her the morning after winning her Oscar—used as the featured image in this column—looking into the middle distance is a perfect example of her abilities: through the exhaustion and the ecstasy, we see a woman in complete control of the image she wants to present.) In interviews with the press, Dunaway, though she seems to be holding back her emotions, has a relentless knowledge and a quickness that makes clear how much she was a brilliant network executive, or a sly, glamorous Chinatown femme fatale. The interview she gave for the documentary feels like a kind of release from the thoughts she may have kept from the press until this point. But the clarity of thought remains.
Meanwhile, director Nanette Burstein shows Taylor, despite her huge fame, carrying herself on screen with a hilarious self-deprecating wit that seems decades ahead of her time. Taylor, we’re told, was 32 when she played the 50-something Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and while her physical transformation for the role is truly impressive, it’s the changes in her spirit and demeanor—her willingness to flaunt the signs of her aging in a kind of self-mockery—that are most impressive.
Both actresses are openly honest about the professional and personal setbacks they’ve faced, including the public’s perception of them. Dunaway talks about her diagnosis with bipolar disorder and her struggles with alcohol, both of which have hampered her ability to trust her great talent and think clearly and precisely. (Both, too, have contributed to her huge reputation as a tough colleague—her calmness giving way to greatness isn’t just something that happened to Dunaway on screen.) We also get an explanation for why “Mommie Dearest,” the infamous bomb that devastated her career, was such a disappointment. Dunaway believed she had found something sharp and real in her portrayal of Joan Crawford as an abusive mother, and lost herself in the role so deeply that, absent a steadier directorial hand, she couldn’t find her way back to the coherence. Others who speak in “Fey’s voice,” including her son, are in a better position than Dunaway to judge why she might have handled a particular project’s failure so harshly. Although she feared publicity, even though she gave a comprehensive interview at the end of her life, Dunaway poured her personal setbacks and challenges into her work. Perhaps her rejection was a rejection of her.
Meanwhile, Taylor speaks with searing candor about, for example, her dislike of “Butterfield 8” (for which she won her first Oscar, which Taylor attributes to her empathy for her own health struggles) and the drama of making “Cleopatra,” which she made with Richard Burton, one of the loves of her life. Taylor and Burton—stars with inordinate appetites, talents and passion—rocked to the top of the world. But their fame came with its own frustrations for someone who first wanted to tell stories: “It’s a losing game,” Taylor tells Merman. “People already have a certain image. They want to believe either good or evil. And if you try to explain, you lose yourself along the way.”
We’ve seen Taylor present herself as someone increasingly willing to air her frustrations with the press. At a joint press conference with Burton, Taylor was asked about her relationship with ex-husband Eddie Fisher. “Do you read the papers, honey? I suggest you do,” she said, rolling her eyes and throwing her head back. Later, she told a 60 Minutes reporter that “fighting is one of the great exercises in marriage.” When the reporter asked her if Burton was dominating their marriage, her famous eyes widened and she said, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” That this seemed like an impulse, rather than a persistent journalistic tactic from someone eager to express her fatigue with the greed of the press, suggests just how talented Taylor is as an actress.
“Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” methodically builds a case that Taylor was a genius at performing on screen and at performing for a kind of media that no longer exists. Dunaway, an actress who was as careful to give away as possible, and Taylor, who was willing to give away everything—but with a wink that made the consumer realize she saw herself as a consumer—were living in a media climate that was more coarse and predictable than today’s.
This media climate was cruel and depressing for those who became its subjects; it also created myths. No one is likely to replace the way actresses are written about today, for all their flaws, with the way Dunaway and Taylor are written about. Yet other aspects of the culture were better positioned to create myths. Dunaway, in retrospect, began to see the work she had done as having an impact on the world; Taylor had used her fame not only to achieve success in the movie world but also to pursue charitable endeavors astonishing in their scale and timing. (In an extraordinary passage in the Taylor documentary, Taylor explains why she started raising money for AIDS: Few people were talking or doing anything. “It made me so angry that I thought, ‘Bitch, do something about it!’”)
We don’t make stars the way we did in the Dunaway-Taylor era these days. And that’s a good thing. But for all the up-and-coming actresses making their own way, watching these two women, in two very strong celebrity movies, can convince you, for a moment, that we don’t make them at all anymore.
“Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes” premieres on HBO and Max on August 3; “Faye” is also available on Max.
