I Wake Up Streaming | May 2023

I’m going to do things a little differently this month. This will be a love song to Jennifer Jason Leigh. The Criterion Channel has just added a retrospective of her films, including an intro from Leigh herself. I’ve previously written about one of the films included there, Georgia, which features my favorite performance by Leigh. I’m ashamed to say I think Sister, Sister (a recent first-time watch) is the only other of her films I’ve written about in this column. Last year, however, I talked about Georgia, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Rush, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Kansas City on my pal Jen Johans’s podcast Watch with Jen in an episode we dedicated to Leigh’s incredible run in the ’90s.

If someone asked me to list my favorite actors, Leigh would certainly be right near the top. I’d put Gena Rowlands ahead of her, which only seems fitting as Leigh has always struck me as a descendant of Rowlands, and both did their best work in the two decades that made the biggest impact on me film-wise, Rowlands in the ’70s and Leigh in the ’90s. Like Nicolas Cage, Leigh is an actor I noticed early in my movie-loving life and fell hard for. More than that, though, her performances not only made me a fan but shaped my artistic ambitions. It’s hard for me to remember the exact chronology of how I discovered Leigh. She certainly made some iconic films in the ’80s, but I encountered most of those a little later (except for Easy Money). I was eleven in 1989 when Last Exit to Brooklyn came out—I didn’t see it in theaters, but I rented it when it was released on VHS, some time in 1990, I’m assuming. (It’d be four years before I read and loved the Hubert Selby Jr. novel it’s based on.) What I remember from that first viewing is thinking that Leigh put everything there was to put onscreen. It can get ridiculous when people talk about acting and use words like fearless and brave, but with Leigh it’s damn near impossible not to talk that way.

After Last Exit to Brooklyn, it seemed she was everywhere, in everything I wanted to see. At twelve, I was making daily trips to the video store a couple of blocks from my apartment, serious about loving films, renting tapes by the armful. Miami Blues and Backdraft were the next films of Leigh’s I remember seeing. Miami Blues was a big one for me. It was one of Leigh’s most striking breakthrough performances, and—as I simultaneously discovered a love of crime fiction—it drove me to read my first Charles Willeford book. Then there was Rush in ’91, which floored me in large part because of Leigh’s raw and tender performance. In 1992, I saw Single White Female in the theater three times, the first film of hers I had the chance to watch on the big screen. The run that followed from 1993 to 1997 displayed Leigh’s range, shaped my taste, and came to define the ’90s for me as much as anything else: Short Cuts, The Hudsucker Proxy, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, Dolores Claiborne, Georgia, Bastard Out of Carolina, Kansas City, and Washington Square. Leigh was extraordinary in all these films, channeling Rosalind Russell in The Hudsucker Proxy, Joan Bennett in Kansas City, and Janis Joplin and Chet Baker in Georgia, taking risks, taking big fucking swings. As with Cage, audiences were with her, or they weren’t. They fell in love with what they were seeing, or they detested it. For me, Leigh embodied everything I wanted from art. She was as electric as Lou Reed and Patti Smith, River Phoenix and Jeff Buckley.

By the late ’90s, as Leigh edged closer to forty, the roles started to dry up, as they often do for women in Hollywood past a certain age. She was terrific in a Hallmark film called The Love Letter, directed by Dan Curtis, based on a story by Jack Finney, and co-starring Campbell Scott. She closed out the decade with one of her best performances yet, as Allegra Geller in David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ. She started doing voice work and television. She had a handful of highlights in the 2000s—The Anniversary Party, which she wrote and directed with Alan Cumming; Jane Campion’s brilliant In the Cut; divisive films like Todd Solondz’s Palindromes and Noah Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding and Greenberg (Leigh was married to Baumbach from 2005 to 2013); and Charlie Kaufman’s masterpiece Synecdoche, New York—but had largely become undervalued and made some of her first forgettable films. The 2010s and 2020s have been much the same. There have been some incredible highlights—The Hateful Eight; Anomalisa; Twin Peaks: The Return; Good Time; Possessor—because great directors want to work with her, but she only rarely gets the kinds of roles to chew on that came her way in the ’90s. Still, she works. It’s yet another thing she has in common with Cage—through low-lows and high-highs, she keeps her head down and does the work. She hasn’t been reembraced on quite the same scale as Cage has in recent years, though. The Hateful Eight, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress, was the closest we came to a JJL-aissance, but her performance as Daisy Domergue was so knotty and complex and balls out that it alienated as many people as it enthralled. Fitting for Leigh.

As I look through Leigh’s filmography, I have some gaps. Television shows I missed or had no idea she was part of. A handful of films I’ve never heard of. But she’s one of those actors that I’ll watch anything for. She’s always making interesting choices, always baring her soul on screen. I should also mention that I have a great idea for a follow-up to Georgia called Sadie Flood. I previously shared my idea for Saturday Night Fever 3: The Future Fucks You in this column, but I’m reluctant to go deep on Sadie Flood, as it’s something I’d actually love to write, with or without anyone’s blessing. Let’s just say it’d be a mix of Jennie Gerhardt and Tender Mercies filtered through a Johnny Thunders haze. Anyhow, JJL forever!

My ten favorite Jennifer Jason Leigh performances (I’m cheating with a couple of ties—sorry):
1. Georgia (1995)
2. Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994)
3. The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
4. Kansas City (1996)
5. Short Cuts (1993)
6. Rush (1991)
7. Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) and Miami Blues (1990)
8. eXistenZ (1999)
9. Dolores Claiborne (1995) and Washington Square (1997)
10. Heart of Midnight (1988)

JJL films streaming on the Criterion Channel:
Interview with Leigh; Flesh + Blood; Sister, Sister; Heart of Midnight; Miami Blues; Single White Female; Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle; Georgia; The Anniversary Party; In the Cut; Margot at the Wedding; Synecdoche, New York

JJL films and shows streaming elsewhere:

Prime Video: Fast Times at Ridgemont High; Kansas City; The Machinist; The Moment; Wrong Is Right
Freevee: I Think I’m Having a Baby; Death Ride to Osaka (aka Girls of the White Orchid); Crossed Over
HBO Max: Dolores Claiborne; The Spectacular Now; The Jacket; Spawn (series, voice)
Showtime: Good Time; Annihilation; eXistenZ; Patrick Melrose (series); Sid & Judy (voice)
Cinemax: The Hitcher
Netflix: The Hateful Eight (Extended and Theatrical); Awake; The Woman in the Window; Atypical (series); Greenberg
Hulu: In the Cut; Sharp Stick; Possessor
Peacock: Welcome to Me; QT8: The First Eight
Paramount Plus: Anomalisa; The Machinist; Road to Perdition; Margot at the Wedding; Hey Arnold! The Movie (voice); The Moment
Kanopy: The Anniversary Party; Good Time; Possessor; The Spectacular Now; Anomalisa; eXistenZ; The Hudsucker Proxy; Welcome to Me; QT8: The First Eight; Hateship Loveship; LBJ
Apple TV Plus: Lisey’s Story (series)
Tubi: Rush; Backdraft; The Men’s Club; Skipped Parts; Hateship Loveship; Miami Blues; Crooked Hearts; Flesh + Blood; I Think I’m Having a Baby; Easy Money; Heart of Midnight; Sister, Sister; The Moment; Alex of Venice; The King is Alive; Me; Rag Tale; Death Ride to Osaka (aka Girls of the White Orchid); Welcome to Me; Amityville: The Awakening; QT8: The First Eight; Wrong Is Right; Crossed Over
Vudu: Alex of Venice; The Moment; Crossed Over; Welcome to Me
Arrow Player: Kansas City
The Roku Channel: Alex of Venice; Wrong Is Right; Death Ride to Osaka (aka Girls of the White Orchid); Skipped Parts; Me
YouTube (largely thanks to jjlchannel & jjlchannel2): The Prom (highly recommended); The Love Letter; Angel City; The Killing of Randy Webster; Picnic (TV broadcast of play); Easter Sunday (short); House of Blue Leaves (play)

I’m sure there’s stuff I’m forgetting on Numbnuts TV Plus or whatever other streaming services I’m in the dark on, but I’ve tried to make this list as exhaustive as possible.

Some gems:
–Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Doe, & Smokey Hormel performing songs from Georgia on KCRW Radio 12/27/95 (also includes interviews with Leigh and her mom, Barbara Turner, writer of Georgia)
–JJL interviewed by Bobbie Wygant about Single White Female
–JJL interviewed by Bobbie Wygant about Georgia
–JJL interviewed by Bobbie Wygant about Dolores Claiborne
–JJL interviewed by Bobbie Wygant about Kansas City
–JJL interview collection
–Lincoln Center tribute to JJL from 2002
–Fearless Pretender is a podcast by Sam Inglis and Jason Shawhan examining Leigh’s filmography in chronological order

Physical releases of note:
Georgia just got an incredible Blu-ray from the Australian label Imprint; Miami Blues was recently released as part of the MVD Rewind Collection; Rush was included as part of Imprint’s beautiful neo-noir box set and also has a nice standalone disc from Kino Lorber; a twentieth anniversary release of In the Cut is coming soon from Mill Creek; Eyes of a Stranger recently got a great Blu-ray from Shout! Factory; the Criterion Collection edition of Fast Times at Ridgemont High is essential; Buried Alive, Washington Square, and Heart of Midnight have swell discs from Kino Lorber; the Criterion Collection’s Short Cuts release is also essential, as is Arrow Video’s Kansas City, Leigh’s two stunning performances with one of her best collaborators, Robert Altman; and Warner Archive’s The Hudsucker Proxy release is gorgeous.

William Boyle is the author of the novels Gravesend, The Lonely Witness, A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself, City of Margins, and Shoot the Moonlight Out, all available from Pegasus Crime. His novella Everything Is Broken was published in Southwest Review Volume 104, numbers 1–4. His website is williammichaelboyle.com. 

Illustration: Jess Rotter

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