“ELAINE STRITCH: SHOOT ME” My rating: B+ (Opening March 7 at the Tivoli)
80 minutes | No MPAA rating
Elaine Stritch has long been a veteran of the Broadway stage, and for most of that time she’s been the object of cult adoration on a scale matched only by the fan mania surrounding Bernadette Peters.
Her trademarks: Brassiness, determination, a wicked sense of humor, a deep appreciation of the Broadway songbook. A friend describes her as “a Molotov cocktail of madness, sanity and genius.”
But at age 87, she’s on the downside of her career. That’s the sobering but weirdly uplifting message of Chiemi Karasawa’s documentary “Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me,” which mixes old footage of memorable Stritch performances with revelatory (often painfully so) cinema verite observations.
We first see Stritch wandering the streets of Manhattan, looking like a puff ball (she loves big animal fur coats – although it might be faux fur) striding on two skinny legs encased in black tights. (One acquaintance compares her to an ostrich.)
Passersby stop to tell her they’re fans. She sings a duet with the elevator operator in her residence hotel. She takes the compliments graciously, but turning away from the fans she’ll often look at the camera and roll her eyes.
Elaine Stritch is a tough old broad. But she’s a tough old broad on borrowed time, and she knows it. In many ways it’s her determination to say “screw you” to the years and forge ahead that makes her so…well, not loveable, exactly, but compelling.
Butler's Cinema Scene 