I can't exactly remember the first time I saw Parker Posey in a movie, but I'm pretty sure it was in Dazed and Confused, a movie I rented without my parents' permission when I was in the seventh grade. One of the many cast of then unknowns (which included a few guys such as Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck), Posey played Darla, the Queen Bitch of Lee High School's senior class and who, on the evening of the last day of school, decides it's her duty as a rising senior to make the lives of the rising freshman girls an absolute living hell.
As she screamed at the top of her lungs, ordering the freshman girls to practice air-raid drills on the hot Texas pavement, calling them "bitches," "sluts," and "prick-teases," all I could think was, "Oh, I like her." Sure, I was terrified of her — I knew girls just like her, and they were equally scary and mesmerizing — but there was something wonderful and enviable about how Darla took no prisoners — she knew she was hot shit and treated everyone else like the opposite. But somehow Posey made her so likable; there was something about her physicality, the way she stretched her arms wide and sauntered around while smacking her gum and yelling at her victims.
That was back in '95, and I hadn't yet heard of Parker Posey, who was, at the time, becoming the '90s indie cinema it-girl. It was around that time I had received, for my birthday, a subscription to Entertainment Weekly, and my understanding of the movies that were playing in major cities (not the small city an hour away from my rural Virginia hometown) started to grow even if I had limited access to them. It was from EW that I heard of The House of Yes, and I was immediately desperate to see it based solely on the image the magazine used of Posey in the film dressed up as Jackie O.
The House of Yes, as you can imagine, was a bit of a mind-fuck to my 15-year-old psyche when I was finally able to rent it (from the larger video store two towns over that actually kept some interesting movies in stock), as I had not quite considered a sexual relationship between siblings (one with an obsessive love for Jackie O, no less) to be a thing, much less something I wasn't even that disgusted by. Again, Posey's Jackie was a manic, suicidal woman who eventually brought great tragedy to her family. And while I wasn't turned on by her relationship with her brother (no matter how cute I thought Josh Hamilton was), there was still a part of me that rooted for Jackie. All of that has to do with Posey's delivery, her style, her whole vibe. She's able to make the worst characters seem really glamorous.
Of course, that's just one side of Parker Posey. There are the other characters who weren't so cynical and bitter. For every Miami (seen in Noah Baumbach's debut film, Kicking and Screaming), there was a Libby Mae Brown in Christopher Guest's classic Waiting for Guffman. The mockumentary about a hilariously unsophisticated midwestern theater troupe was the first of Posey's multiple collaborations with Guest and his recurring players, which have allowed her to develop her characters through improvisation. But that tidbit is not something you need to know about her, because she (and the rest of Guest's frequent stars) all pull off their comic (and musical!) performances so seamlessly.
It's also a skill she developed early on: the complete understanding of the character she inhabits. On the Criterion Collection edition of Dazed and Confused, there's an "interview" with Posey's character Darla, all of it unscripted. You can see exactly how comfortable she is not just inhabiting the personality of another person, but also developing that personality on her own.
In college, when I had better access to movies not available at the small-town video store, I also got to watch the movie that featured Posey's break-out role: Party Girl. She plays Mary, a free-spirited and fashionable nightlife personality who struggles to balance her fun after dark with the responsibilities of her day job as a library assistant. While Party Girl is notable as being the first feature film to be streamed over the Internet, it's also a fitting role for Posey who has managed to maintain a dichotomous career path herself.
While she continued to star in smaller features like Hal Hartley's bleak comic tragedy Henry Fool (and later in the sequel, the espionage-themed Fay Grim), she also took on small roles in bigger pictures, most notably You've Got Mail, playing Tom Hanks' cold-hearted and wound-up girlfriend. She'd also go on to play a role in Scream 3 and Blade: Trinity (yes, as a villainous vampire), and shed some of the harsh meanness that became associated with her characters and started to get "quirky" parts in films like Superman Returns, in which she played Lex Luther's ditzy girlfriend. She brought some comic relief, finally, to somewhat serious movies.
But the film that most resonates with me now, as an adult, is Zoe Cassavettes' Broken English. As Nora Wilder, Posey perfectly captures the indignity of looking for romantic fulfillment as a woman in her late 30s / early 40s (which, for some reason I don't think I'm even remotely ready to parse, I find incredibly relatable). Nora seems to have shown a lot of promise both in terms of her career and love life, but she finds herself stuck in an unfulfilling job as a concierge at a hotel and without a partner while her best friend seems to have managed (at least on the surface) what she dreamed of achieving. It's the sort of role you'd expect to see Catherine Keener in rather than the woman who played those memorable hard-edged women in Dazed and Confused, The House of Yes, and Kicking and Screaming.
Part of the reason why it's so affecting? Probably because I don't want to see Parker Posey end up that way: full of malaise and disappointment. Sure, I'm projecting a lot onto her real life and assuming a lot about her, but it feels that the promise she showed as the '90s indie queen didn't pan out. I want to see Parker Posey in an Oscar-winning role — or many Oscar winning roles.
But that's also part of her charm, isn't it? That she was able, in the early years of her career, to play such interesting, flawed, and different women on film. She hasn't failed by any means; rather, Posey seems like another great actress who doesn't easily fit into a box, a woman who can't easily be cast as anyone because she's believable as so many people. That's what makes her so special, and what not only makes her stand out from the other actresses of her generation but also all up-and-coming it-girls that followed her. She set the standard, and she continues to follow it by remaining somewhat elusive as a personality.
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Photos: Everett Collection
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