I must say now, that despite how great she looks for 50, the
video was hands-down the worst I've ever seen from Playboy. I
welcome comments and insight into why YOU liked or disliked her
video.
Main >> CD, Video >> Farrah Fawcett: All of Me
Farrah Fawcett: All of Me
Subject: Opinions
on Farrah's PPV Special
From: Michael E.
Cristel <alecto@petchem1.wustl.edu>
Digest:
volume97/179
Date: Fri, 13 Jun
1997 11:15:46 -0500
Well, I was one of the many who tuned in on Wednesday
for Farrah's landmark Playboy Pay-Per-View special.
I must say now, that despite how great she looks for 50, the
video was hands-down the worst I've ever seen from Playboy. I
welcome comments and insight into why YOU liked or disliked her
video.
Well, first off, there was this sappy quality throughout the whole thing. We learn from the initial credits that Farrah produced this special, and after the first few minutes, it seemed like it. Clouds, clouds, clouds; that's all I could think about after her opening skyline dialogue about love and so forth. We get the regular family retrospective and pics from high school in Corpus Christi, TX. Most-beautiful girl in class, all four years of HS. Yes, now we know how beautiful she is.
The background on WHY she became a model and actress was fairly well done, with comments from Charlie's Angels producer Aaron Spelling, Hef, and her former manager. The story of the infamous swimsuit poster was also told, and I liked Camille Paglia's commentary on Farrah being the woman that defined a generation. I had that poster myself, and I must say that there has never been another quite like it.
We move on to the story of her first Playboy shoot. Farrah was given final say in everything; locations, types of poses and everything apparently had to have her seal of approval. She was reminiscing about how nervous she was, and how she gradually started on an emotional roller coaster as the days of shooting went on. They we see her break down crying during a shoot. She says that "this is the hardest thing I've ever done" amidst sobs and sniffles. She goes on with it, and we then hear the story about how the editors, forgetting that she was to have final say as to what pics went to press, took the magazine issue to press without her final approval. Considering how she and her personal assistant went on and on about this breach of contract, it was surprising that a) She didn't file some sort of legal suit against the magazine, and b) She would agree to a SECOND pictorial with them.
Now call me callous, but the last thing I want to see in a "erotic video" is the star giving the impression that she was miserable during the whole thing. I got the impression from here on out that she did this not because she wanted to, but because PB offered her a truckload of $$$. Same with this new pictorial and video. She may have said it was to explore her art and so forth, blah blah blah, but my attitude throughout the rest of the video was "dollar signs."
From here we move on to the body sculpture and painting scenes. Utterly worthless for this type of video, IMHO. When I want to look at Farrah nude, I want to look at her NUDE, and the act of painting herself head to toe denies me that pleasure. Sure, it was interesting to see just how one body paints, but we see this seemingly endless scene of her painting herself, painting a canvas, etc..
I agree it has some potential as a glamour scene, but to show off her incredible figure, it fails miserably. After the scene was over, my friend and I began to wager as to how much one of her "body paintings" would go for at an art sale. Oh well.
The final scene is with Farrah in some 1920's retro poetry thing. I'm not a culture critic, but again we see Farrah as someone OTHER than Farrah. Besides the poetry being absolutely abysmal--she could have done a reading of one of the great romantic poets--the scene has yet another ephemeral quality that allows us to see as little of her as possible. She stands on the stage at the end, draped in a black silk sheet, and we hear a thunderous applause, and she then "accidentally" drops the sheet, and I FINALLY get a decent frontal shot of her nude body. She quickly covers up, making an "oops, did I do that?" face, and the video ends.
Overall opinion: Terrible. Easily the worst PB video I've yet seen, and that's saying a lot. Yes, I understand that Farrah wanted to express herself in her artwork, but she missed the point in that Farrah is the one we wanted to see. Most of us rent or buy the videos to look at the beauty of the lingerie-clad or nude models. I don't look for high-quality musical scores or poetry in the background, and I don't expect to be bombarded with some wild artsy theme. And I certainly don't care to know how Playboy f*cked her over on the deal, while hearing her whimper and cry in the background to the effect that I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS.
I've never posed nude for anything, and I can't say I would understand what it would be like for someone to do so. Farrah has been an actress and a model for decades now, and I see a very fine line between posing nude and doing some of the near-nude scenes she has done in movies or pictorials. I understand that at her age, she is entitled to some feelings of inadequacy about her body. I've never seen someone her age with such a fantastic body, and the fact that she needs to call her hubby to get emotional reinforcement during her shoot tells me that she isn't told about how beautiful she is to her face as often as she should be (or any woman for that matter).
I agree she should be given some measure of control over what is done with her modeling and photographs. Any woman posing nude should expect no less. I just thought that if she's making a video for PB, she should try to put a bit more eroticism in it. I guess my definitions of what one finds erotic are different from hers. Because after it was all over, I wanted my money back.
Comments are appreciated.
Main >> CD, Video >> Farrah Fawcett: All of Me
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