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Arts. Entertainment.
Funny Girl
still makes
an entrance
'You think beautiful girls are going
to stay in style for ever? Any minute
now they're going to be out!
Finished! Then it'll be my turn."
Barbra Streisand a* Fanny Brica, on
Broadway in Funny Girt, 1964.
IT HAS been 27 years since a
knobby-kneed 22-year-old
from Brooklyn teetered onstage
on Broadway in her first starring
vehicle, belted out I'm the Great
est Star (a song that now seems
more like a prophecy than a show
tune), and in the course of the mu
sical's first five minutes became a
legend.
Some things, however, never change:
Barbra Streisand still knows how to
make an entrance.
A rainy Sunday morning: Streisand
has left her Manhattan aerie and is
about to descend upon the St James
Hotel, where she will grant a rare per
sonal interview to talk up her long
awaited film adaptation of The Prince
of Tides, which she directed, stars in
and partly wrote.
While they wait, a coterie of publicists
bustle about and count down La Streis
and's arrival as her driver checks in
periodically via car phone.
"She's five minutes away ... Three
minutes ... She's downstairs!" They
quake, worried that something will go
wrong. Her breakfast, however, is
deemed error-free, one potential disas
ter averted. "Her egg-whites are ready,"
says one. Egg-whites? "Barbra doesn't
like the yolks," it is explained.
And then, suddenly, the lift doors
part, and there she is.
She's smaller than you expect, a wren
like creature swathed in black. Nothing
(but for the famous nose, which she
refused to bob, thinking it might change
the tone of her voice) is larger than life.
Well, except maybe her talon-length
nails, which she wouldn't cut even as a
teenager, thus opting out of a career as a
concert pianist, something she had been
studying. Still, she is an undeniably elec
tric figure, as well as one who has left an
indelible impression on this country's
pop-culture consciousness.
"Without Barbra, there would be no
Singer-actress-director-writer Barbra
Streisand is both passionate and
private as Ryan Murphy discovers.
Bette, no Madonna," says George Segal,
who co-starred with her in the 1970 film
The Owl and the Pussycat. "Barbra is
the one who made being unconvention
al conventional."
She is also, according to much of what
has been written about her of late (espe
cially those essays focusing on her sing
ing), a national treasure. When asked
about such tributes, Streisand seems
shocked. "Really? They say that?" She
wants proof. And so the glowing reviews
for her just-published recording-career
compilation, Just for the Record, are
rattled off.
"That's nice," she says. "But what,
you think I've been working my whole
life to be called that?!" She laughs. "I
only read two reviews," one of them
being a Los Angeles Times critique. She
leans forward. Her eyes narrow. "What
did you think of it?" she demands.
Love letter
It's a loaded question. You see, al
though it was a four-star love letter,
Streisand hated it: because in between
the glowing adjectives, she was accused
of being professionally reclusive, of being
too picky in choosing projects, of not
utilising her talents enough. She says it's
not true (and she has the resume to prove
it, full of Emmys, Tonys, Grammys,
Golden Globes and even Oscars (best
actress in 1968's film of Funny Girl, best
original song for 1976's Evergreen, the
love theme from A Star is Born).
She ponders this a moment. "I've been
around for a long time, haven't I?" she
clucks. "And I don't feel my age at all."
She pauses, wanting to talk more
about this isolation business. "I have
never quite adjusted to being famous,"
she says. "Even though that was my
dream, to be somebody. But stardom
hasn't turned out to be all I thought it
would. It's been hard work."
But interviews, she has lately learned,
are not So why's she talking after almost
10 years of "no comments"?
"I want to help my movie. I didn't do
any press on Nuts, and I love that movie,
and it hurt it,"
At first, Streisand said she was terrified
about the prospect of facing the media.
"But I must say, it's been almost fun!"
Her fear is understandable. Streisand
has been largely vilified by Hollywood
throughout her film career since Funny
GirL Why? For doing only what she
wants to do. And now she's director of a
$US35 million ($A46 million) movie to
boot and a female director in a profes
sion dominated by men.
Eight years ago, Streisand said that, as
far as Hollywood was concerned, it was a
man's world. At the Jerusalem premiere
of Yentl, she fumed that within the enter
tainment industry, "a woman can be a
singer or an actress, but not much more".
But when asked about this statement
today, Streisand, unwilling to stir up any
new controversies, denies having said it
When the transcript of her speech is read
back to her, though, she laughs and
barks, "OK, it's true! I do think we live in
a sexist society. And I'm not saying it's
chauvinistic, because as far as I'm con
cerned, it's female sexism. The articles
that say bad things about me are almost
always by women. I think women have
been oppressed for so long that when
another woman becomes successful, it's
threatening to them."
The Streisand backlash was at its
height, she believes, when her first direc
torial effort, Yentl, opened in 1983, and
she was denied an Oscar nomination.
"It was like the Anita Hill hearings.
She was up on the stands, and the sexual
harassment issue was front and centre.
And with me, too, it was like 'Sexism is
alive and well.' And not just from men —
I don't blame the men. I really did not
expect to win. But to not even get ac
knowledged, when the part of Hadass
[the ingenue role, played by Amy Irving]
Barbra Streisand: her arrivals are still an event. Help
Barbra Streisand: her arrivals are still an event.
received a Best Supporting Actress nod
— it was strange to me."
Part of her popularity problem, she
figures, is that "when you are a powerful
woman, everyone thinks you're fearless.
It's nonsense, I tell you, nonsense. I'm
terrified all the time. It's just that the
difference between me and another per
son is that I will risk failure, and this
makes people angry at me."
What is she possibly afraid of? "Hu
miliation!" she shrieks. "When I was
making Yentl, I kept thinking, 'God, I
don't know what I'm doing here.' But I
just do what I'm passionate about."
For the past four years, her passionate
project has been The Prince of Tides. "A
friend kept reading me passages of it over
the phone, and I was startled. Then I read
the book, and I knew I had to make that
movie."
In Tides, Streisand plays Susan Low
enstein, a psychiatrist who heals the tor
mented soul of Tom Wingo (played by
Nick Nolte), who is called to her New
York offices to help solve the mysterious
suicide attempt of his sister, Savannah.
For Streisand, directing is a natural
career move: she has always been the
driving force behind her films, even her
earlier ones.
According to Streisand lore, William
Wyler, director of Funny Girl, became so
enraged when she tried to tell him how to
do his job that at one point he shoved his
megaphone in her hands and said, "Here!
You tell vourself what to do!"
- Knight-Ridder Newspapers
$