Of course everyone who is interested enough about Ms. Masterson's career knows that Carlin Glynn is her mother, and has some acting credentials of her own. In Three Days of the Condor, it was Carlin Glynn who played the wife of Condor's (Robert Redford) old friend from the CIA, Sam Barber, who was killed in a blind alley by rogue agents who were trying to kill Condor. When I first posted this, I accessed a memory of many years ago since I last saw the movie, and mistook Ms. Glynn for another character in the movie. I checked IMDB to be sure, and my second choice was the right one. Well, IMDB goofed, too. They transposed the character's name with Ms. Glynn's. I remember that scene now. Redford feared for the life of Sam Barber's widow, so he slipped out of Faye Dunaway's place, where he was hiding, to warn her, almost getting killed by Max Von Sydow. That scene showed Carlin Glynn's emotional range, moving from being happy to see Redford's character to being alarmed at his cryptic message of warning. Now we know "range" runs in the family.
In 1984, Carlin Glynn played Molly Ringwald's frazzled mom in Sixteen Candles. Her character was so frazzled that she forgot poor Molly's sixteenth birthday along with the rest of her goofy family. The actor who played her husband was Paul Dooley, who is remembered for playing Dennis Christopher's father in Breaking Away as well as Molly Ringwald's dad in Sixteen Candles. During the brief run of Kate Brasher (CBS-TV, 2001) MSM had Paul Dooley as a guest star in two of the episodes. Mr. Dooley portrayed a local parish priest who had some trouble with a street guy hanging around his parish who was claiming that he was Jesus. The street guy was his son in Breaking Away, Dennis Christopher. This hit me when I saw the last scenes from Sixteen Candles just as I settled in at the latest hotel, where I am writing this. Back in 2001, I remembered Paul Dooley acting with Dennis Christopher in Breaking Away, and made a post about it in the FYI pages back in 2001. However, I forgot that he once played Carlin Glynn's husband in Sixteen Candles.
Paul Dooley continues his acting career in movies, television, and the stage, including the critically praised Hairspray.
Nurse Veronica Callahan's first appointment with MSM's Doctor Cabe opens this week's Mercy episode, attempting to get Nurse Callahan to set some goals for the therapy to deal with the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), such as panic attacks, nightmares, lack of "anger management," and more. In the second appointment, Callahan talks about treating the wounded soldiers in Iraq and having a plan to help a patient without health insurance get the treatment he needs even if it means bending hospital rules and getting into trouble. Doctor Cabe describes Callahan's tendency to act to help someone else even if it will mean pain for the nurse as "falling on a grenade" for someone else, even if Nurse Callahan isn't responsible for the person's predicament. There is a link established between how Nurse Callahan reacted to the wounded soldiers she treated and how she feels she must do something to help others whenever no one else will. Well, the "grenade" goes off after Callahan falsifies the records of a heart patient from the Dominican Republic so he can stay in the U.S. with his family. Her boyfriend, a doctor at Mercy Hospital, figures out what she did and was not happy about it. We learn something about Doctor Cabe when Callahan rips her for bringing up the alcoholism in her family. Callahan asks how someone can deal with an Iraqi child bleeding to death without a couple of drinks, and Doctor Cabe lets it out that she flew Blackhawk helicopters in the Gulf War (1991) and saw just as many bad things as Callahan.
This was the 18th episode of Mercy, and from the way the therapy session went, I can't conclude that we have seen the last of Doc Cabe. We'll have to wait and see, though. When I know, you will know, provided you surf in here.
I am watching the first episode Ms. Masterson is guest starring in as I write this announcement that her character, Doc Denise Cabe, will be back again next week on Wednesday, March 24th at 8:00 PM. MSM's Doc is actually a therapist trying to help ER Nurse Veronica Callahan through Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder following the nurse being victimized by a violent robbery. There might be more guest appearances for Ms. Masterson on Mercy in future episodes, as James Van Der Beek's character, Doctor Briggs, is a frequent semi-regular on the series. Better yet, maybe Doctor Cabe might transfer to another New Jersey hospital, Princeton-Plainsboro, to serve as therapist for Doctor Gregory House, a lifetime commitment. If Mary Stu's character comes back for a few more episodes, I'll set up a special page linked from the MSM Cable Television Schedule Page, right after Kate Brasher's Corner Table. Maybe Doctor Cabe's Private Booth, with photos and episode descriptions. During the trailer for next week's episode, the announcer said, "Mary Stuart Masterson joins the cast of Mercy."
Speaking of Kate Brasher, Ms. Masterson's 2001 CBS television series, Michelle Trachtenberg co-stars on Mercy as Nurse Chloe Payne. In 1996, as a child actress, Ms. Trachtenberg starred in the first Nickelodeon movie, Harriet the Spy, in which Gregory Smith played one of Harriet's friends. Gregory Smith was a co-star of Mary Stuart Masterson's in Kate Brasher. Michelle Trachtenberg is making a successful transition from child actress to adult, which is often difficult.
The New Mom is back in the saddle with episode 17 of the first season of Mercy, an NBC drama based in a New Jersey hospital. Ms. Masterson plays Doctor Denise Cabe in the episode titled There is No Room for You on My Ass. Sounds like your average life in the American workplace. If I didn't do the cable television schedule, I would have missed this. As far as I know, MSM is not a regular on Mercy, but unless her Doc leaves the hospital's employ, maybe Doctor Cabe will be back. An interesting side note is James LeGros also plays a doctor on the show, and he lucked out as the main squeeze of Andie MacDowell's character in Bad Girls. Man, that acting is a tough gig! I think we can be sure that Mr. LeGros didn't complain, "Andie MacDowell's love interest? Why ME?". Be sure to mark your calendars and make a little time to watch Ms. Masterson show off her acting chops yet again. Heaven's Prisoners, a 1996 released movie, is also on the schedule and is a fine example of MSM's acting talent, along with the underestimated Alec Baldwin, who is as good at drama and suspense as he is comedy on 30 Rock.
The index, or entry page of the site was looking a little tired, so I added a clock and calendar along with a weather report for Oil City, Pennsylvania from Weatherunderground. The weather box contains sunrise and sunset times, along with phases of the moon. It is better than most of the weather report boxes in the newspapers. Started out just wanting a clock and calendar to replace the original Countmaster counter image from 1998-1999, but then got just a little carried away.
The January 8th issue of Entertainment Weekly focused on possible Oscar winners for this year. One article spotlighted the director of the Iraq War action/suspense film The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow, whose forte is the action movie. Ms. Bigelow makes it clear that the romantic comedy and the costume drama is not her thing. When a director shoots one of the most suspenseful and realistic law enforcement hand-to-hand combat scenes as she did in the opening raid scene in Point Break (you can almost feel those lawn mower blades as Keanu Reeves struggles with the suspect) a lace doilies scene just doesn't seem to fit. Sarah Polley, recently seen as the eldest daughter of the second President in John Adams on HBO, acted in Bigelow's The Weight of Water and is starting a career of her own helming movies. Here is how Ms. Polley quotes Kathryn Bigelow's biggest piece of advice for female directors, a group which includes Mary Stuart Masterson:
Realizing that some of the postings on the FYI page are more personal observations rather than news or articles about Mary Stuart Masterson, I have set up a blog on the Webmaster's Back Office subsite. This way, the FYI page can get all MSM news and comment without other subjects slipping in when news is sparse.
I took a trip down memory lane by clicking on some of the old FYI Pages that are in the archives. One old entry from early in this decade contained some photo pages that Claudia Kehl had located. Just for fun, I clicked on two of them and the pictures are still there. So, we'll put those links back up again just so you newbies can enjoy them. These photos were taken around the time that MSM was performing as the wife of the filmmaker Guido in the Broadway musical Nine, which has recently been made into a movie version.
I wasn't planning to write anything in here until after the holidays were over except in the event there was some interesting news about a new movie or other project in the works. What changed my mind was stumbling on to the film To Kill a Mockingbird on television as I was clearing up some work on a holiday vacation. To Kill a Mockingbird was written by Horton Foote, an author who has been the subject of several entries in this "blog" over the past nearly one dozen years as many of his works were produced into films by Mary Stuart Masterson's father, with her mother and actor Robert Duvall often appearing in different roles. After viewing To Kill a Mockingbird I started thinking about how an author's work, whether in the form of a novel, or a screenplay for a film, can cause changes in how a person looks at the world and relates to the other people in it. Such thoughts can come to a person when they have passed a half-century of life. After watching To Kill a Mockingbird, I found the paperback copy of Anne Perry's mystery novel The Twisted Root, the last book my mother was reading before she had to give up reading from the effects of macular degeneration. I had left the bookmark at page 136 where she had left it. So, the question that ran in my mind after both of these events was what happens to how a novel or film moved, and even changed someone, after they are gone? As we read literary works and view a lot of films during our lives we experience these emotions and changes, as so many used to record about Ms. Masterson's films in this site's old Guestbook, such as Some Kind of Wonderful and Fried Green Tomatoes. After we have left this life, does anything linger of how these works made changes in ourselves? Is there anything left behind for the time we have spent reading and viewing them?
The only answer I can arrive at is it depends on what kind of change the work caused in us, and how we reflected that change in our lives, mostly in how we relate to others we encounter, and what changes occurred in our values and priorities. In To Kill a Mockingbird we are challenged about past prevailing social attitudes about race and handicaps. I don't want to use "tolerance," a much overworked word, in describing what Horton Foote was advocating in this work. Mr. Foote didn't want us to tolerate a black man like Tom Robinson, or a handicapped man like Arthur Radley, no, he wanted us to see the humanity in both of them. You accept people when you recognize their humanity, you don't merely tolerate them, as if they require our permission to be as they are. When we carry these revelations from a work, and start living in the world as if we understand those revelations, then there is something left behind for the time we spent reading and viewing such a work. After we are gone, we can't tell people about it over and over, but how we treat others can live after us as an enduring legacy.
Happy New Year.
I know I'm posting this on the major holiday of the season, but it was decided some time ago that this Christmas was going to be a quiet one at home with the exception being Christmas Mass at Saint Stephens. Father Matthew had to recruit four of us to take up the collection at 9:00 AM Mass, and one of them was the husband of Chris, one of the twin daughters of a friend of mine named Mary. The happy couple had a little boy last year, a miniature Steelers fan. After taking up the collection, we dumped the contents into the master basket to take up to the altar with the communion gifts. While Chris' hubster was emptying his basket I said to him, "Well, in a few more years I guess Chris will have to start saying 'You'll shoot your eye out!' at Christmas," which was an allusion to the movie A Christmas Story. We had a chuckle about that, and it looked like he told Chris and Mary when he returned to their pew. So, it's not like I didn't have any fun this year. Basically, I was just looking for a little downtime at my own place here in Oil City after years of not having much time to spend here. Some good news is that one of my other good friends, Elaine, graduated at the top of her class in Medical Assistants School and has now successfully changed careers. Elaine sent me a copy of her graduation picture with the Christmas card, a terrific present.
2. Boys like to find new ways to try to injure and kill themselves and their playmates. Just make sure he isn't the group's "test pilot" like one of us. We "built" a raft, and volunteered him to test it in a pond. It floated about ten feet out before slowly deconstructing. Don't worry. He could swim.
6. No big cardboard cartons in the house--ever. I used one to turn the staircase into a roller coaster. It worked until the edge of the box caught the carpet and poured me out. Down the stairs in four or five somersaults, the ceiling and the carpet a big blur. Luckily, I wore a plastic Army helmet. I didn't lose consciousness that time, either. Another housecall.
