{"id":2459184,"date":"2020-06-04T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=327188"},"modified":"2020-06-04T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T22:00:00","slug":"at-home-in-aspen-streaming-shirley-a-spooky-and-nontraditional-biopic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/at-home-in-aspen-streaming-shirley-a-spooky-and-nontraditional-biopic\/","title":{"rendered":"At home in Aspen: Streaming \u2018Shirley,\u2019 a spooky and nontraditional biopic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Most readers first encounter Shirley Jackson through \u201cThe Lottery,\u201d the sensational short story that sparked scandal upon publication in 1948 and has since become the vehicle for high schoolers to learn about literary metaphor. In the new horror film\/biopic \u201cShirley,\u201d<\/a> the young Rose (Odessa Young) meets the author on the page in much the same way, reading \u201cThe Lottery\u201d in the New Yorker on a train with her newlywed husband (Logan Lerman). They\u2019re headed to meet Shirley and her husband, Prof. Stanley Edgar Hyman, at their home near Bennington College in Vermont.<\/p>\n

The fictional young couple is soon swept into an imagined version of the Jackson\/Hyman household, with Rose\u2019s husband Fred serving as a teaching assistant to Hyman and Rose – who is in early pregnancy – as Jackson\u2019s domestic servant, subject of psychological abuse and, eventually, creative partner.<\/p>\n

Fearless in the title role, Elizabeth Moss continues making a case as the most exciting American actor working today. Here, as in recent turns in \u201cUs\u201d and \u201cHer Smell,\u201d she plays a grotesque misanthrope who you can\u2019t look away from. Her twitchy and feral Shirley Jackson hasn\u2019t left the house in months while battling creative blocks and battling Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg). She doles out wicked barbs, drinks heavily, declares herself a witch, declares Rose and husband \u201cspies\u201d and, at one point, when asked what she\u2019s writing, responds with a grin: \u201cA little novella I\u2019m calling \u2018none of your goddamn business.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the second film release starring Moss to go to streaming since the novel coronavirus pandemic shuttered most American movie theaters this spring, following the March release of \u201cThe Invisible Man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShirley\u201d premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won a Special Jury Award and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. It had been scheduled for theatrical release this summer. With the novel coronavirus keeping most movie theaters closed nationwide, it\u2019s getting a streaming release from Neon on Friday. Aspen Film is partnering with Neon to present the film online.<\/p>\n

The spooky and surprising film is based on the novel by Susan Scarf Merrill and directed by Josephine Decker, who is following up her 2018 indie favorite \u201cMadeline\u2019s Madeline.\u201d<\/p>\n

It ignores the tropes and traditions of biographical films \u2013 and the often-disappointing subgenre of movies about writers \u2013 and instead imagines Jackson as a sort of gothic villain playing a part in the kind of story she might have written. It is, in part, about Jackson writing her novel \u201cHangsaman,\u201d but moreso it\u2019s interested in the domestic terror inflicted on women in midcentury America, with inspired creepy visual and auditory touches and flights of hallucination to create a wholly original portrait of genius. <\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most readers first encounter Shirley Jackson through \u201cThe Lottery,\u201d the sensational short story that sparked scandal upon publication in 1948 and has since become the vehicle for high schoolers to learn about literary metaphor. In the new horror film\/biopic \u201cShirley,\u201d the young Rose (Odessa Young) meets the author on the page in much the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2459184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-17 03:06:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2459184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2459184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2459184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2459184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2459184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}