Instagram live replay of my interview with HRC Michigan – Annie, you’re a gem! We discussed my recent recognitions by INvolve People and Corp! Magazine, how Clark Hill creates an inclusive culture, the important work the Legal Marketing Association has done around DEI, what authenticity really means, and how important it is to simply live and let live.
Thank you, Legal News’ Brian Cox, Brad Thompson, Sheila Pursglove, for the lovely support you’ve consistently shown me in my career. Grateful for you, for your friendship, and for all you do for our profession!
Roy Sexton, director of marketing has been selected by Corp! Magazine as one of Michigan’s 2024 Most Valuable Professionals.
Sexton was among the winners of the 9th annual MVP Awards, honoring the state’s most dynamic and influential business leaders. Corp! Magazine characterized the winners as the leading voices in shaping Michigan’s business and economic direction. The MVP Awards recognize individuals who have made significant contributions to their businesses, their communities, and the state of Michigan.
Sexton leads Clark Hill’s marketing, branding and communications efforts in collaboration with the firm’s exceptional team of marketing and business development professionals. He has over 25 years of experience in marketing, communications, business development and strategic planning.
“At Clark Hill, our value proposition is simple. We offer our clients an exceptional team, dedicated to the delivery of outstanding service,” says Sexton. “We recruit and develop talented individuals and empower them to contribute to our rich diversity of legal and industry experience. “
Sexton is passionate about problem solving, facilitating business growth, crafting communications strategy and enhancing law firm culture. He works closely with the marketing team to advance the firm’s digital and social media presence and external engagement, using multi-channel distribution and data collection. This enables the team to quantify results and use those results to produce thoughtfully and strategically organized content for clients and prospects.
Sexton was named one of INvolve People’s 2023 Top 100 OUTstanding LGBTQ+ Executives internationally. He was listed in Crain’s Detroit Notable LGBTQ in Business in 2021 and Notable Leaders in Marketing in 2023, and he was a Michigan Lawyers Weekly Unsung Legal Hero in 2018.
In 2022, Clark Hill’s marketing campaign received the Best Marketing Campaign award from the Managing Partners’ Forum in London, celebrating professional services organizations. The campaign was noted for its focus on values, diversity and inclusion. The Clark Hill marketing and business development team was also awarded Best Marketing Initiative by Managing Partners’ Forum in 2020.
“I’m proud of how DEI has become so fully integrated into my professional efforts in this world. As international president of the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) in 2023 and as immediate past president this year, we have kept inclusion front and center, including me singing ‘Born This Way’ with drag queen Athena Dion in Florida last year at our annual conference,” says Sexton.
He adds, “At Clark Hill we received Mansfield Certification for our efforts in the DEI space as well as conducting firmwide allyship training, all led by our fabulous HR team, supported by the marketing team on external messaging, including a series of DEI-focused videos. Those videos have received hundreds of thousands of views which is very heartening to the team here.”
Sexton hosts the monthly Expert Webcast series “All the World’s YOUR Stage: Authentic Culture Drives Authentic Growth,” discussing the importance of inclusion, allyship, authenticity, and personal/professional branding with nationally recognized executives and thought leaders. Each episode has a monthly reach of at least 20,000 impressions.
“Always take the pause. This is advice my wonderful boss, our Clark Hill Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer Susan Ahern, has imparted on me regularly. We live in such a wired world, and, while responsiveness will always have its place, being measured and thoughtful, listening and learning first, and then collaboratively coming to solutions always wins the day. This has been transformational advice for me. Oh, and pick up the phone sometimes – nuance is too frequently lost in email and things can unfortunately escalate as a result!” Sexton comments. “Also, I carry with me the wisdom my late mother often shared: ‘Tell people what they mean to you in the moment when it will mean something to them.’ Carrying the large responsibilities of the LMA presidency, this thinking served me very well. Again, pause, acknowledge, reciprocate. It makes the world better for all.”
In 2023, Sexton was the international president of the 4,000-member Legal Marketing Association (LMA), a professional organization he’s been a member of since 2012. Throughout his tenure as LMA’s leader, Roy prioritized DEI issues, putting them front and center on all education and messaging efforts.
Sexton also serves on the board of Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit, and he is a published author of two books: Reel Roy Reviews, Volumes 1 and 2. He was named Best Actor in a Musical by BroadwayWorld Detroit in 2017 for his performance as Jasper in The Mystery of Edwin Drood at Ann Arbor Civic.
“Be open and inquisitive to all adventures before you. Every task represents an opportunity to learn and nothing should be ‘beneath us.’ Obviously, know and hold your worth, but sometimes working on that presentation with a colleague is an opportunity to see how others think, to help shape narrative, and to expand your skill set,” Sexton advises.
He adds, “That was what differentiated me in the early days of my career when I was still in healthcare. I worked on bond rating presentations, board retreats, strategic visioning decks and everything in between. I’m a theatre person by training so storytelling is important to me, and I was able to enrich the work by helping my colleagues consider audience needs in their presentations. Through that I built relationships, gained trust, and was exposed to a number of operational areas that would have otherwise been unavailable to me.”
July 24, 6 pm eastern time … live on Instagram with HRC Michigan – more info here.
And thank you dear friends and colleagues Steve Fretzin and Ray Koenig for the lovely shout out here. Love you, both!
EXCERPT …
STEVE: So would we be, so we would be doing the right thing by giving a shout out to Roy Sexton, huh?
RAY: We can always give a shout out to Roy Sexton. Roy heads our marketing for entire firm and he is the king of celebrating other people.
STEVE: King of authenticity. That guy is crushing that on so many levels, but when I think about authentic, I go right to Roy, he’s amazing.
RAY: He really is and he provides a really great example for the attorneys in our firm. And then I think especially for the younger ones. And I think also for the people that in our firm, that most of us feel we don’t fit a cookie cutter mold and don’t want to, that’s Roy.
Roy is who he is and in a really good way. He’s also really smart and strategic. He does so many things well, but he’s just, he’s really good at, he’s authentic, but he’s also really good at celebrating other people, which I just, I really appreciate in that respect.
And then we also, full disclosure, we have a very good friendship. So he’s one of the first people to text me or call me when something good happens in my life. He’s just a great human being.
STEVE: Yep, yep, absolutely agreed. And he’s, I think he’s been on the show a couple of times. He’s just one of my favorite people and always so warm and inviting.
Roy Sexton, Director of Marketing at Clark Hill, has been named one of Michigan’s 2024 Most Valuable Professionals by Corp! Magazine. The recognition highlights Sexton’s significant contributions to his firm and the broader business community in Michigan.
With over 25 years of experience in marketing, communications, business development, and strategic planning, Sexton leads Clark Hill’s marketing, branding, and communications efforts. His work emphasizes collaboration with a skilled team to deliver exceptional service to clients. “We recruit and develop talented individuals and empower them to contribute to our rich diversity of legal and industry experience,” Sexton stated.
Sexton was named one of INvolve People’s 2023 Top 100 OUTstanding LGBTQ+ Executives internationally. He was listed in Crain’s Detroit Notable LGBTQ in Business in 2021 and Notable Leaders in Marketing in 2023, and he was a Michigan Lawyers Weekly Unsung Legal Hero in 2018.
Sexton’s leadership extends to his role as the 2023 International President of the Legal Marketing Association (LMA), a position he has used to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). “I’m proud of how DEI has become so fully integrated into my professional efforts in this world. As international president of the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) in 2023 and as immediate past president this year, we have kept inclusion front and center,” Sexton said. Under his guidance, the LMA has launched member resource groups and enhanced its inclusive talent pipeline.
His efforts at Clark Hill have also led to notable recognitions, including Mansfield Certification for DEI efforts and awards from the Managing Partners’ Forum for marketing campaigns focused on values, diversity, and inclusion. Sexton’s team has been instrumental in advancing the firm’s digital and social media presence, producing strategically organized content for clients and prospects.
Sexton is also active outside his professional responsibilities. He serves on the board of Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit and is a published author of two books. Additionally, he hosts the monthly Expert Webcast series “All the World’s YOUR Stage: Authentic Culture Drives Authentic Growth,” where he discusses inclusion, allyship, authenticity, and branding with nationally recognized executives.
Reflecting on his career, Sexton emphasized the importance of thoughtful communication and collaboration. “Always take the pause. This is advice my wonderful boss, our Clark Hill Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer Susan Ahern, has imparted on me regularly,” he commented. He also shared personal wisdom from his late mother: “Tell people what they mean to you in the moment when it will mean something to them.”
“Playing comedy is hell. The necessity to have an audience love you is perhaps more overwhelming than in any other form of entertainment. With singing, dancing, acting you don’t know until it’s over if you’ve had acceptance or rejection. The comic knows sooner. The audience laughs or it doesn’t.” – Imogene Coca
One might describe marketing and business development similarly. In fact, there is one unicorn in this industry who is adept at BOTH: Brenda Pontiff. We are thrilled that Brenda is joining host Roy Sexton to talk about how business development and stand-up comedy are in fact two great tastes that taste great together!
Born and raised in Texas, Brenda Pontiff left for graduate school in Kansas and wound up touring the country with the Complex Improv Theater. She returned home and began working on her stand-up comedy skills at The Houston Comedy Workshop’s Comixh Annex, the infamous club that spawned the likes of Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison. A few years later, she moved to Los Angeles and became a New Face at the famed Hollywood Improv. She was also a regular at Igby’s and toured as a feature act for franchise clubs including Punchlines, FunnyBones, and Laff Stops. She took a 14-year break in the early 2000s to focus on her global business development career but has happily returned to bring her Texas meets California perspective to the stage. Brenda believes comedy is like the Mafia, you can never leave.
During said global business development career, Brenda founded Partner Track Academy after years of watching young accountants and lawyers, often part of a group challenged with inclusion barriers, panic over business development expectations related to making partner. So often firms’ marketing staff members are not trained to support non-partners’ revenue generation efforts or they simply do not have the bandwidth to do so. This missing component can be filled through individual, customized coaching or periodic workshops and presentations that provide tools, tips, and best practices that lead to improved networking habits, client satisfaction, revenue growth, and ultimately, a coveted seat at the partners’ table.
Brenda has:
· More than 25 years in accounting and law firm sales and marketing.
· Sold services on behalf of an AmLaw 100 firm, exceeding sales and new client acquisition goals for almost eight years.
· Worked as a professional speaker, stand-up comic, writer, and actress, winning several national awards.
· Created a new sales process for a Big Four accounting firm, taking revenues from zero to $3.7 MM in the first year.
· Led a Big Four sales support team during the demise of Arthur Andersen, winning 67% of the regional client base while competing against three other international accounting firms.
· Maintained a 100% success rate while working as a Big Four global strategist to retain critical, at-risk clients.
· Created a cross-selling client team that increased an AmLaw 200 firm’s revenue by $900,000 through one pitch meeting.
· Spoken frequently at association events and corporate retreats regarding account-centric methodologies, best practices for networking at conferences, diversity and inclusion change management, harnessing stress for better productivity, navigating the book of business demand, and embracing resiliency.
Thank you, Clark Hill and Corp! Magazine, for this recognition. It truly means the world. I do the best I can to focus on helpfulness and team-building and community and celebrating the authenticity in everyone, so a nod like this really puts the wind in my sails. I’m grateful I get to work for such an incredible organization as Clark Hill as well as support my professional community in the Legal Marketing Association. I’m truly a fortunate soul!
And thank you, Joel Epstein, Leslie Smithson, Jennifer Kluge, Alexis Yaeger (Jakowinicz), for your friendship and support on this. I appreciate you all very much!
And presenting: ALL of Jake’s Women. His girlfriend, his therapist, his sister, his wife, his late wife, his daughter aged 21 and 12. Through December 7. [Photo by Melissa Tremblay of Platinum Imagery.]
Playwright Neil Simon has always seemed to me like a man adrift in a sea of male menopause. The man sure can write a very funny line (I often think his work is best served in a musical comedy setting), yet he seems preserved in Swinging 60s amber, a throwback to another time when the whole country fantasized about living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and found humor in delicatessen euphemisms and sitcom-sexualized comedies of error.
Simon’s semi-autobiographical memory play Jake’s Women, thereby is an interesting conundrum. First produced in 1990 and starring Alan Alda, the show is Simon’s post-mid-life-theatrical-crisis-writ-large. Simon literally and figuratively exorcises the the ghosts of women who have influenced and shaped his work. Take that, Joan Baim! And that, Marsha Mason! And that … Elaine Joyce?!? In the wrong hands, the play could be an exercise in misogyny at worst or farcical foolishness at best – a kind of Borscht Belt version of Fellini’s 8 1/2 (itself later staged/musicalized by Maury Yeston as Nine).
I am happy to report that the sparkling ensemble in Two Muses’ current production of Jake’s Women (directed by Bailey Boudreau) hits all the right notes. Given that Two Muses’ mission is to promote and celebrate the artistic contributions of women, this play is an inspired and intriguing choice. In lead actor Robert Hotchkiss, the production gives us a sensitive and grounded Jake, informed and haunted as much by modern life/sensibilities as he is by any kind of cooked-up gender war.
Jake’s marriage to whip smart corporate warrior Maggie is failing as he has never gotten past the death of his first wife Julie. The past and present collide as Dickensian specters (wives, daughter, therapist, sister, paramour) shadow Jake’s every move, given vibrant, intrusive life by his crumbling mental state. Jake as a writer is forever trapped in his own head, revisiting the past as a means of understanding the present yet never truly living in any moment. Jake’s laptop computer is an omnipresent stage symbol of the wall he puts between himself and the rest of humanity. I suspect anyone with a smart phone can relate to that.
As Maggie, Amy Morrissey provides the perfect counterpoint to Jake’s neuroses. She has a tricky task of playing Maggie both in the present day and as an idealized Maggie from the early days of their relationship. The actress shows great warmth and humor for the material but is never sidelined by Simon’s more misogynistic tendencies. Maggie is a person first and foremost, as she intones to Jake in one of their later conversations.
The ensemble work is particularly strong in this production. Charlotte Weisserman as Jake’s 12-year-old daughter Molly beams with a mischievously angelic presence – as does Barbie Weisserman as Jake’s sister, the chaotically big-hearted filmmaker Karen. (No shock there I supposed as Charlotte clearly has inherited some lovely, natural stage gifts from her talented real-life mom Barbie.)
Some of the production’s most emotionally affecting moments come from the theatrical mother-daughter team of Meredith Deighton as Jake’s late wife Julie and Egla Kishta as college-age Molly. The familial dynamic achieved between Alexander, Kishta, and Hotchkiss during the play’s second act is remarkable – deeply felt with a comfort and ease rarely seen on any stage.
It wouldn’t be a Neil Simon show without some broad comic relief. Margaret Gilkes is sharp-edged fun as Jake’s saucy therapist Edith, aided and abetted by some of the script’s best zingers, which Gilkes nails with Elaine Stritch-y aplomb. Luna Alexander as Jake’s of-the-moment mistress has the show’s most raucous scene (think The Odd Couple‘s Pigeon Sisters by way of The Jersey Shore‘s Snooki and Jwoww), and she wrings every bit of rimshot glee from her second act moment.
Like the majority of Two Muses’ output, the production values are spot-on, with clever and efficient use of the space, detailed but never overdone set dressing, classic character driven costuming, and an evocative lighting plot.
Back to Jake: Hotchkiss builds his character beautifully, giving us a broken soul who is not just relatable but a lot of fun to watch. Jake’s journey is a difficult one to convey on stage, rife with potentially self-indulgent pitfalls, but Hotchkiss is very smart, warm, and wry and never panders to the audience or to his character’s many, many flaws.
Jake follows a similar arc to Company‘s Bobby, never sure who he really is and only finding motivation by pinging off the input of others. Unlike Sondheim, however, Simon offers Jake a bit more redemption. Hotchkiss does a fine job walking Jake’s circuitous path as he realizes that snark and witty wordplay do not healthy flesh-and-blood relationships make. The play’s script leaves us with an ambiguously happy ending, as Jake and Maggie set off to resolve their differences, but the rich performances by Hotchkiss and Morrissey overlay that denouement with a believable and honest sense of the couple’s future chances.
The play runs through December 7 at Two Muses Theatre. Two Muses Theatre performs in the Barnes & Noble Booksellers Theatre Space, 6800 Orchard Lake Rd, West Bloomfield, MI 48322, South of Maple (15 Mile). Enter the bookstore, and the theatre is on the left. Tickets can be purchased online here or by calling 248.850.9919 (Box Office Hours: By phone: 10am-5pm. In person at the theatre, 60 minutes prior to all performances.)
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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.
The other day over lunch with my pal Neil Simon (the consultant, not the playwright) I started to elaborate on a point I made earlier (apropos of nothing) on a blog entry about Gone With The Wind, namely that I love comedians who can mix bawdiness with self-deprecation, raunch with childlike whimsy, spiteful take-down with satiric absurdity. If a comedian is just mean or arrogant or gross for the sake of achieving some false sense of superiority over his or her audience, I ain’t havin’ it.
For me, Richard Pryor wins out every day over Eddie Murphy. Kathy Griffin or Joan Rivers get the prize over Lisa Lampanelli or Sarah Silverman. I’d rather spend an afternoon with Stephen Colbert, Lewis Black, or Whoopi Goldberg than Dane Cook, Kevin Hart, or Bill Maher (maybe). The list goes on.
(Maher may be the exception that proves the rule for me as his egomania, misogyny, and dyspepsia often serve as a brilliant counterpoint to the political zingers he is attempting to land…but he still gives me a headache.)
I’d never really given much thought to how I feel about Howie Mandel, though. Like Gallagher or Carrot Top, he made my junior high self laugh with abandon over the funny voices and the latex gloves on his head, the germaphobia and the OCD. I never watched St. Elsewhere – he may have been genius there. I just don’t know. I adored his charming children’s show Bobby’s World in the 90s, and it always amused me greatly that his helium-voiced alter ego also doubled as the vocalizations for Gizmo in Gremlins and Skeeter on Muppet Babies.
As I got older, Mandel just seemed to disappear into the margins. I may have unfairly lumped him into the buffoonish band of novelty comics, or maybe he just became complacent, hosting game shows (Deal or No Deal) and talent contests (America’s Got Talent) and shaving his head and growing silly-looking “soul patches” on his chin.
How wrong I was.
Last night, we had the pleasure of taking in his stand-up routine at Caesars Windsor in their much-vaunted Colosseum room. (Let me say, though, that the room does not live up to the marketing hype, resembling a giant pole barn and with an entrance/egress system that functions more like a giant game of Milton Bradley’s Mousetrap than an efficient/pleasant welcome/farewell to the audience. It is a claustrophobe’s and a process engineer’s nightmare.)
Regardless, Mandel presented a remarkable show, reminding, at least this viewer, what made Mandel great in the first place. His routine on Saturday night was a mix of prepared and improvised material, free-wheeling in its delivery and free-ranging in its topics. With a boyish pluck, Mandel brought down the house, riffing on audience members’ foibles and any information they recklessly volunteered. His silliest and funniest moments came at the expense of two security guards downstage who seemed more interested in staring at each other than in protecting the funnyman. Yet, Mandel was never mean nor cruel; he was ever-playful and as hard on his own eccentricities as those of the targeted audience members.
Mandel was plenty “blue” in his material, but it never offended as he comes across more as a little kid laughing at his own farts than a skeezy old man who bullies those around him with dirty jokes. You know the type I mean, right? You’ve seen such pricks (sorry for the colorful euphemism) at your high school reunions or at family picnics? “Hey, you, listen to something really filthy here. Does it make you uncomfortable? Yeah? Good! I win!” Mandel’s not like that at all, thank goodness.
Sadly, the same can’t be said for his tone-deaf opening act Shuli Egar, a correspondent from The Howard Stern Show, who came off as a hateful little creep and who seems to think life is there for his ridicule and contempt. There were pockets of laughter during his set, but mostly it was a pretty flat affair that could be best described as Don Rickles/Cheech & Chong/Ray Romano as re-written by Attila the Hun. My advice to him? Ditch the hipster glasses that make him look like mean bird, make fun of himself more, and let us see his tortured inner life that makes him so despise his outer one. THAT would be interesting. (Let me add – Stern I’ve always loved. See rationale in opening paragraphs above. This toadie of Stern’s? Not so much.)
Back to Mandel. He shared with the audience that earlier on Saturday he had become a grandfather for the first time, and, rather than coming across as cloying or preachy (a la someone like Bill Cosby), he used said news in clever and irreverent ways to introduce such tried and true Mandellian topics as … his omnipresent fear of germs; the torture of being on the road 24/7; his love for his wife as expressed by torturing her daily with public tomfoolery; the highs and lows of being part of nationally beloved reality shows on the Peacock Network (En…BEEEE….Ceee!); and so on.
Seeing Howie Mandel live is an interesting phenomenon. A forgotten comic (at least to me) becomes vital, vibrant, possibly even essential in that setting. The electricity of his intelligence and his wit, the kindness in his heart, and the acerbic view he projects toward this ridiculous planet make him very winning, indeed. I’m sure the TV shows and the merchandise and the appearances rake in the moolah, but here’s hoping the third act of Mandel’s storied career gets him back on stage, alone and live, with no yellow-and-black briefcases full of money nor aspiring warblers from Topeka.
Detroit always looks best from … Canada?
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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view.
Melissa McCarthy’s latest comedic opus Tammy is like a crass redneck cousin to Barbra Streisand’s/Seth Rogen’s similarly themed The Guilt Trip. That may seem like a slam. It’s not. I enjoyed both movies, flawed though they are, particularly given that exceptional performers can sell the thinnest of scripts.
Where McCarthy stumbles a bit more, however, is that she helped write the slight script for her starrer. Ouch.
What other movies are in Tammy‘s DNA? If Nebraska and McCarthy’s own Identity Thief had a cinematic baby, it wouldn’t be that far afield from Tammy, which depicts a shaggy dog heroine (McCarthy, natch) on the lam with her bewigged and besotted (as in drunk) granny (Susan Sarandon!). Heck, throw in a touch of Sarandon’s own twenty-five-year-old summer blockbuster Thelma and Louise for good measure.
Tammy’s life is a mess. She nearly totals her jalopy when she hits a deer on the way to her crappy fast food job. (In one of the movie’s more touching moments, Tammy lays down on the highway, gets face-to-snout with the deer, and talks the little fellow back into sprightly, white-tailed-scampering-across-a-field life. I liked that part. A lot.)
Tammy gets fired from said crappy job for being late (because of the deer miracle), throws ketchup packets at her now-erstwhile boss (McCarthy’s real-life husband and the film’s director Ben Falcone), comes home early to discover her hubby (a suitably golf-caddy skeezy Nat Faxon) serving a romantic dinner to her neighbor (Toni Collette, wasted here), and runs home (two doors down) to her mother (Allison Janney, dependably ringing gold from nothing).
Sarandon’s character, who lives in Tammy’s mom’s spare bedroom, already has a suitcase packed and can’t wait to provide the ancient Cadillac and limited funds ($6700) necessary for her and her granddaughter to skedaddle from small-town life and go see the spectacle that is Niagara Falls.
Just like The Guilt Trip (where Streisand’s character wanted nothing more than to see the Grand Canyon), all manner of comic disruptions keep Sarandon’s and McCarthy’s characters from their destination. Like Rogen and Streisand, Sarandon and McCarthy also end up in a barbecue restaurant where Sarandon meets cute with a potential beau (Gary Cole, playing it rather subtle for once). Unlike The Guilt Trip, Tammy heads in a decidedly cruder direction, involving Cole and Sarandon and the backseat of that decrepit Cadillac. Ewww.
(The fact that I’m giving point/counterpoint between two failed comedies released within 18 months of each other is indicative of two things: 1) my relative lack of taste and 2) the fact that Hollywood really has no new ideas. It could be worse. I could be reviewing Transformers.)
Tammy is entertaining. I laughed heartily at McCarthy’s antics (just as I did during The Heat or Bridesmaids). I also found myself moved by her ability to telegraph so pointedly the hurt of someone who lives on the margins, either by choice or happenstance. McCarthy can inhabit a character like no other. Problem is it’s the same character, and, while I like and can relate to this person she plays (and her penchant for wearing Crocs), I’d like to meet someone else … soon.
Sarandon is a hoot, particularly in her early scenes, also offering us a caustic comic portrait of someone who refuses to be consigned to the periphery. Her performance is derailed mostly by the script,which turns her into a Golden Girls sexpot for no discernible reason at the midway point.
Kathy Bates sparkles as Sarandon’s pet food store magnate/lesbian cousin (yeah, it’s that kind of movie) who lives in one of those beachfront homes that only exist in Hollywoodland. She gives Tammy and her grandma a warm meal, a roof over the heads, and one fabulous July 4th wingding. Despite the improbability of Bates’ surroundings, she grounds the movie just as it seems likely to run right off the rails, as Bates beautifully walks that fine line between satire and heartache that has been her specialty since Misery.
Mark Duplass (Zero Dark Thirty) is also a source of warmth as Tammy’s suitor Bobby, cursed as he is to babysit his philandering father (Cole). The quiet scenes between McCarthy and Duplass are when the film is at its finest (not unlike those charming moments between Kristen Wiig and Chris O’Dowd in the aforementioned Bridesmaids). All the cartoonish chaos stops for a moment, and two believably broken souls connect as kindred spirits.
That is the movie I hoped to see tonight. Maybe next time, McCarthy. I believe in you.
[NOTE: I’ve been suffering from a wicked cold this entire holiday weekend, and this movie was viewed as a late-afternoon matinee while I was all hopped up on DayQuil. Take all preceding advice with a huge grain of salt.]
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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Thanks to BroadwayWorld for this coverage – click here to view. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.
Just 21 days until the release date of ReelRoyReviews, a book of film, music, and theatre reviews, by Roy Sexton!
“On behalf of the American people, I just want to thank the filmmakers of The Campaign for nailing beyond a shadow of a doubt the shallow, overproduced, manipulative, hypocritical circus that politics have become in the post-millennial U.S. of A. Regardless whichever end (or hopefully middle) you sit on the political spectrum, this film should be required viewing to help us all regain our senses as we head into the fall. Oh, and by the way, this movie is freaking hilarious.”
Let the countdown begin! Just 24 days until the release date of ReelRoyReviews, a book of film, music, and theatre reviews, by Roy Sexton!
“Like Saturday Night Fever and Boogie Nights before it, Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike gives us a bleak portrait of how folks at a dead-end find escape (and cash) in grimy professions…accompanied by a disco soundtrack.”
![And presenting: ALL of Jake's Women. His girlfriend, his therapist, his sister, his wife, his late wife, his daughter aged 21 and 12. November 14-December 7. A heartwarming comedy by Neil Simon. [Photo by Melissa Tremblay of Platinum Imagery.]](https://i0.wp.com/reelroyreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/1529859_754215797994833_3842075267912951949_o1.jpg?ssl=1)
![Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.](https://i0.wp.com/reelroyreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/tammy.jpg?ssl=1)