Sissy Spacek

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We celebrate youth when we most fear death. We seek escapism when there seems no way out.

From a 1977 Interview Q&A Andy Warhol and Bob Colacello conducted with Sissy Spacek:

Andy Warhol:

It’s funny they never write about you in the scandal sheets. I guess it’s because you always play such a young person.

Sissy Spacek:

I’m grouped together with Tatum O’Neal and Jodie Foster. That’s fine with me. You see, you can get by with a lot more that way. People let things slide. That’s good, I guess.

Andy Warhol:

And child actors are getting so big again.

Sissy Spacek:

I wonder why.

Bob Colacello:

I think because everything’s going in an escapist direction because things are getting worse.

Sissy Spacek:

Do you think so?

Bob Colacello:

They don’t seem to be getting better. The news magazines always used to have hard news stories on the covers. Now it’s entertainment stories.

Sissy Spacek:

I see you—you get overloaded by the truth. That’s the nice thing about livin’ in Los Angeles. Anything that happens in the news—great tragedies, scandals—people just think, “What a great idea for a film!” Everything’s thought of in terms of “material.” Remember that thing in Uganda? They couldn’t get the films out fast enough.•

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Spacek and Duvall are drawn together in the desert.

This incredibly odd 1977 film is a surreal masterpiece that Luis Buñuel would have been proud to call his own. Torn from Robert Altman’s dreams and set in the California desert, 3 Women is the discombobulating story of a girl named Pinky (Sissy Spacek) who goes to work in a nursing home and becomes very attached to fellow nurse Millie (Shelley Duvall). The story of the relationship is a tortured one, filled with paranoia, accusation and obsession, which slowly melts into a brilliant reveal.

It’s impossible to stress the degree of difficulty that Altman assumed in creating a feature-length film that operates with the eccentricities of the dream stage. He was capable of aiming high and falling into the abyss; Quintet may be the worst movie ever made by a genius-level director. But 3 Women is a masterwork unlike anything else Altman ever directed. (Available for rent on Netfilx and other outlets.)

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