silkwood

Happy Thanksgiving! What better way to celebrate than by watching the trailer for Chastity, the turkey that Sonny Bono cooked for Cher in 1969.

Chastity was a vanity project for Cher, written and produced by Bono. It is also suspected that Bono directed the film under the alias Alessio de Paola. The film was bankrolled by our pals over at American International Pictures, which normally means you will be getting a Grade-A B-movie, but this one falls short. Sonny and Cher also conceived their daughter Chasity Bono while making this movie. There is a joke in there somewhere.

The real travesty here is that Cher was so shell shocked by the negative response to this film that she refrained from any movie work for well over 10 years. One of her next roles was in Silkwood, which earned her an Oscar Nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Cher’s title character is so unlikeable that I only lasted about fifteen minutes into this one (YouTube), but the trailer is perfectly rad!

Cher on the beach, running towards camera to some noir-ish gumshoe music and the strange marketing decision to have the narrator commit character assassination on it’s protagonist at the :15 second mark.

After poring through a few tributes to the late Mike Nichols this weekend, I was reminded that he directed Silkwood, the moving biopic on nuclear power plant worker turned activist Karen Silkwood.

I have not seen the movie in decades, but I did pick up the soundtrack earlier this year because I was curious to revisit Meryl Streep’s rendition of “Amazing Grace,” and not at all because of the smoldering looks that Meryl, Kurt, and Cher were throwing my way.

For the most part, musical scores are a little too highbrow for me, but I am most definitely glad I forked over a few dollars for this LP. The selections below made me want to revisit the movie, think of it as an emotional sampler. Per usual Meryl delivers.

Down The Highway (Reprise) – Georges Delerue