Hawn
sparkles in 'Banger Sisters'
By
Sandi Davis
Goldie Hawn plays legendary groupie Suzette in "The
Banger Sisters." Put the
emphasis on "play." "I was a worker.
I was dancing, working from the age of 18," she
said.
"I danced rock 'n' roll, I danced in clubs, but
I made money doing it."
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Hawn, now
one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, still
has the golden-girl image. Despite a stomachache
she blamed on lack of sleep, the actress kept her
posture ramrod straight, her laugh infectious and
sprinkled the question-and-answer session with "You're
so sweet."
The actress peppered her remarks with that low giggle
and that big smile as she talked about her life,
her family, "The Banger Sisters" and the
character of Suzette. Despite her 1960s image as
a free-spirited goof from "Laugh-In,"
she won a best supporting actress Oscar for her
role in "Cactus Flower" in 1969. In the
1960s, while other people her age were trying out
the "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" lifestyle,
Hawn was in dance school. She denies ever being
a hippie.
"I was studying ballet and jazz and going to
New York and pounding pavement and making a living.
When I was 21, I got a movie, then 'Good Morning
World,'" she said. "I danced in Las Vegas.
My whole life was doing that stuff on the stage,
and then there was 'Laugh In.'" She made her
point by saying, "It wasn't my trip unless
I was getting paid for it. "I thought this
was a really brave movie, that it was some really
good writing," she said. "Why would I
say no? I wish I could say I thought of it. She
is what happens to those women who don't give up
the dream, who don't grow up."
Still, there are a few singers she might have gone
backstage to visit, given the chance. "I can't
say that Elvis wasn't probably my first, but I like
Mick (Jagger) a lot," she confessed. When Hawn
got "The Banger Sisters" script, she called
her daughter, Kate Hudson, who was playing groupie
Penny Lane in "Almost Famous." Hudson
told her to do it. "I'm playing a groupie.
Go figure," Hawn said.
While Hawn wasn't a groupie in real life and can't
remember her first rock show, she did marry Bill
Hudson, a member of the popular pop band "The
Hudson Brothers." Her oldest children, Kate
and Oliver Hudson, are his. "When I traveled
with Bill, my father called me 'the pregnant groupie,'"
she said, and laughed.
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'Banger Sisters' Know
How To Rock 'N' Roll
Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. There's a
reason that sex is first. In the rollicking
early
days of rock tours, girls would do anything
to spend some quality time with men named
Mick, Jim,
Roger, Robert, Stephen and Jimi.
Those girls were called "groupies."
And in "The Banger Sisters," the
late Frank Zappa bestowed that title on
two friends, Suzette (Goldie Hawn) and Vinnie
(Susan Sarandon), who slept their way through
the rock star universe.
Decades later, Suzette has just been fired
from her bartending job on the Sunset Strip
in Los Angeles. Time has not been kind to
Suzette, and despite a new chest size and
a still swaggering attitude, she needs help
and a friend. She goes to the only one she
has, and does she get a surprise. First,
Suzette gets an unexpected travel partner.
Harry (Geoffrey Rush) is a fussy bachelor
who escapes from a bus and joins the money-hungry
and company-starved Suzette. Together they
travel to Phoenix in search of Vinnie. Vinnie
has morphed into Lavinia, a well-dressed
suburban wife and mother whose daughters
have no idea that their mother's name is
a legend in rock circles.
Vinnie is horrified to find Suzette on her
doorstep, especially when the next thing
she must deal with is finding a daughter
in the pool with her boyfriend, doing things
that moms don't want their daughters to
do. Slowly, layers begin to peel from both
women, and they discover they still are
friends and that each can learn from the
other.
"The Banger Sisters" is a delightful
comedy about women of "a certain age"
who share some pretty exotic memories. The
best scene is one where the women find the
photographic evidence of their adventures
and find themselves going through box after
box of pictures, trying to remember what
body part belonged to whom.
Rush's ever relaxing Harry was a sweet spot
in the film. It was simply fun to watch
him turn from fixated to fuzzy as he remembers
how to have fun, a trait he shares with
Vinnie. Hawn is perfect as Suzette, and
her ditzy blondeness is perfect for the
out-of- control character who needs some
solid ground under her. The nicest surprise
was the perfect performance by Eva Amurri,
who plays Vinnie's daughter Ginger in the
movie and is Sarandon's real-life daughter.
If you've been to a rock show, this is a
trip down memory lane. For others, it may
be a history lesson. But no matter how you
put it, "The Banger Sisters" delivers
a good time.
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"I'm a family girl. I got married very
young. I like that," she said. "I liked
having kitchens, and decorating houses and having
animals and having children." Her actress-daughter
is married to Chris Robinson of the rock group
Black Crowes. Son Oliver is a Buddhist scholar,
while son Wyatt Russell is a hockey player. Wyatt's
father,actor Kurt Russell, and Hawn are planning
a move to Vancouver so their son can play hockey.
After that homage to domesticity, the actress
was quick to add that she did have her wild times.
She told about a few."I remember taking all
my clothes off and jumping in Lake Mead and nearly
having a heart attack, traveling to Europe on
a dime, meeting people, enjoying my time with
strange wonderful people (who) still are friends,"
she said. "Openness, that's who I was and
hope I continue to be. That's how fun things happen.
You want to be free, you want to feel your child
in you, you want to be trustful, you don't want
to get jaded, you want to stay positive. These
are very challenging things when you get older."
Hawn said she discovered that the hardest thing
to do is keep a balance, and she's been careful
both of her private life and her business, and
it's hard. "One year, I had three movies
come out back to back, and people get tired of
looking at you," she said. That said, the
56-year-old actress still looks great. She attributes
it to good genes, no drinking, diet and spending
time with herself. When her publicists came to
fetch her for her next round of print interviews,
she turned and said her stomach felt better, probably
because of the energy in the room. Or, maybe because
for 20 minutes, we were her groupies.
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Heart to
Heart
Equality of the sexes, it seems,
does not extend to matters of the heart. A new
study suggests that
men and women have strikingly different vulnerabilities
to heart attack. For women, emotional stress
from, say, divorce or the death of a loved one
is more likely than physical stress to trigger
sudden cardiac arrest. For men, the opposite is
true. What accounts for the difference? Researchers
suspect that
levels of adrenaline, which can cause the heart
to beat abnormally fast, probably shoot up
in women when they’re upset and in men when
they’re doing the heavy lifting
The milky
way
No one is saying you should rush
out for a milk shake, but a controversial study
suggests that
consuming dairy products, especially milk and
cheese, can reduce the risk of insulin-resistance
syndrome, a precursor to diabetes. The researchers
found that overweight young adults who ate dairy
at least five times a day were 70% less likely
to develop the problem. One reason: the lactose
in milk
and cheese is metabolized slowly and may help
regulate blood-sugar levels. Better yet, you
might try mixing some oatmeal with your milk.
The combination of fiber and milk, say
scientists, may reduce the risk of insulin-resistance
syndrome even further.
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