As you may have heard, Sean Young descended upon the Directors Guild of America awards this past Saturday and proceeded to drunkenly heckle Julian Schnabel. This is compelling for a variety of reasons. For one thing, maybe she, too, thought Todd Haynes and Sidney Lumet were robbed. For another, who invited her?) But mostly this is all so sad. She really used to be something).
To the folks who think she's just that nut from "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective," Young is also mythic for being the more lunatic half of a nutty Hollywood relationship with James Woods and the woman who never quite recovered from not getting Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman part in Tim Burton's "Batman Returns." Famously, she appeared on "The Joan Rivers Show" in full costume. It was the best performance she'd given up to that point. (This clip has no sound.) She was threatening to become the Miss Havisham of bad-luck casting.
But Young was an extremely interesting actor, with her cockeyed line readings and alluringly strange way with her body. She seemed to be mocking stardom with idiosyncrasy while throwing off a weird sexuality of her own. She was starrish. I like to imagine that Parker Posey took a page from Young's book and studied it very closely. Posey keeps her crazy-danger on screen - she's the relatively sane Sean Young. (My friend Mark points out that they have the same nose.)
Young's being off the deep end was different from these dysfunctional starlets now. Her train wreck was entertainingly subversive. She wanted to be a star, but 1980s-1990s Hollywood was just the wrong galaxy for her. Today she'd be trapped on some reality show where she'd be competing for Loon of the Week. But Young was an original. Of course, as Ty wondered earlier today, you have to think if Young were a man, she would have kept working in bigger parts. Historically, unstable, alcoholic women have been punished in a way unstable men haven't.
In 1992, Entertainment Weekly put her on the cover and basically wondered, "Could this career be saved?" Last year the magazine was still wondering. After last Saturday I think we have our answer.
