Oh, Winona

I am an unabashed fan of Winona Ryder. Part of it comes from the fact that we went to Junior High and High School together, although I vaguely remember seeing her there. Maybe once...maybe. She started taking off as an actress as we entered High School, and I remember being totally amazed that someone from our podunk town could rise to be involved in movies. It all seemed like an impossible journey to me. As I started reading interviews with her, I realized that we both loved THE REPLACEMENTS (the band, not the Keanu Reeves movie).


While everyone else was into MC Hammer or INXS, it was a rarity to find someone who liked the greatest rock and roll band of all time as much as I did, alas...she was gone. As time rolls on I've also discovered that she likes Wilco almost as much as me. For instance, this was taken from an appearance on Conan O'Brien a while back:

Conan: People that can sing, I envy them - and I really can. I can't but I just always think that's the greatest, in a way, the coolest gift.

Winona: It is. I mean, you know Jeff Tweedy, I think he has one of the best voices I have ever heard.

Conan: Well, you bring it up, Wilco is on the show. And you are huge fan of Wilco?

Winona: I'm the most enormous fan of Wilco ever.
*SIGH* My heart just skipped 2 beats.

So I admit I have a bias about her, but I still think she's an outstanding actress. I just don't understand why she gets treated so unfairly because she dates rock stars and got in trouble for stealing. Who the hell cares!? People simply cannot get past these things and they are totally overlooking a really solid actress. People have such a hard-on for Angelina Jolie that they totally overlooked Winona in GIRL INTERRUPTED. Winona carried that movie but Jolie got to be intense and freak out so she got all the attention. That role could not have been done without Winona playing the foil. Plus, she's received 2 Golden Globe noms for "Little Women" and "The Age of Innocence," 2 Oscar nominations for the same AND has worked with almost ALL the best living directors such as Scorsese, Coppola, Jarmusch, Linklater, Burton and Woody Allen. Yet google search her and f-ing "arrested for shoplifting" is the all over the page!

Not only all that, but she's a good person. When Polly Klass was kidnapped and murdered here in Petaluma, Winona came home to help. She didn't do big photo ops, she just wanted to help. She even donated reward money. A few years back my good friend Andy Levine made an awesome movie called THE DAY MY GOD DIED (http://www.thedaymygoddied.com/) about child prostitution in Bombay. Winona narrated it because she believed in the material. Yet we don't hear about that stuff. All we hear are snarky jokes.

I'm only writing about this because I just finished a review of her newest movie THE DARWIN AWARDS Yet again, people are dissing the movie (fine. I loved it, but it is kind of silly) and moreso, bagging on Winona. People want so desperately to see her fail and I just don't get it. Can't we move on and let her be an actress again? When is this prison of judgement going to let her out on paraole? What does she have to do to earn peoples forgiveness???

I'm hoping the picture below will be a step in that direction. It's a still from Richard Linlaters A SCANNER DARKLY and it looks RAD!!! Go Winona! Don't let the assholes get you down!!!