STARS IN BLACK TURTLENECKS: Barbra Streisand
(Above: Barbra Streisand and Naomi Wadler in 2018 photographed by Amanda Demme for New York and its “The Cut” for a four-part series under its own rubric of “Women and Power.” It was explained like this: “‘Women and Power’ isn’t a series about women’s empowerment. It’s a series about women and their relationship to power — how they get it, how they lose it, how they wield it, what they sacrifice for it, and, ultimately, what they hope power will help them achieve.”
NAOMI WADLER, then a sixth-grader at Maret School in Washington, D.C., who spoke in D.C. at March for our Lives. She told New York’s Alexa Tsoulis-Reay: “As you may know, Courtlin Arrington was a black female who was killed in her school in Birmingham, Alabama. My mother showed me an article about it, and I noticed that her story wasn’t all over the front pages of newspapers like it would’ve been if she were a white girl. That made me angry. After Parkland, my friend and I organized an elementary-school walkout. I was interviewed about it, and the video went a little viral. Then George Clooney called us on the Thursday before the March for Our Lives. The march founders had him make the call because they thought he could convince my mom.
“I had about 24 hours to write my speech. Writer’s block is an understatement. I was freaking out. I watched speeches by Ryan Deitsch, Emma Gonzalez, and Cameron Kasky repeatedly, to the point where it got annoying. I wouldn’t believe me if I were you, but when I was up onstage I thought, This is really fun, I like this. In the middle of my speech, everyone was clapping.
“I was about 5 when Trayvon Martin was shot, and my mom explained that some men thought he was scary because he was brown. That really confused me. Then I’d be reading my book and look up at the news and see people saying that he shouldn’t have been wearing that hoodie, that he wasn’t dressed appropriately — that confused me even more. When I was in preschool, a boy asked me why I was brown, and I’ve had derogatory terms thrown at me, so I’ve known these things my whole life.
“I already know what I want to be. I want to be the executive president of the New York Times or a photographer. The Times has never had a black female president; in fact, the majority of their board is white men. I want to vote in every election possible.”
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BARBRA STREISAND, who told New York’s Holly Millea: “In 1976, people in Hollywood weren’t used to a woman being in control. I was producing the film for First Artists, a company originally set up for Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, and me. In exchange for no salary up front, we could make our own films with full creative control and a piece of the back end (which we only got if the film was a hit). My budget was $6 million, and any penny spent over that had to come out of my own pocket.
“So I was completely responsible for the money and content. I wanted to update the characters and their relationship to reflect the times. I didn’t want my character to change her name. I wanted her to write her own songs, and when we didn’t have a love theme, I composed the music myself … ‘Evergreen.’ I also decided that we had to sing live instead of lip-synching like most movie musicals. It was the only way to get the reality I wanted — and I’m a terrible lip-syncher.
“I also had final cut, and when the studio executives didn’t like the director’s version, I had to work with the editor to recut the movie. Actually, it’s kind of ironic. I wanted the character I played to be a liberated woman, and yet I stupidly gave away the title of producer and took a lesser one. I even cut certain scenes of mine so I would have less screen time, because I didn’t want to attract more criticism.
“Happily, A Star Is Born turned out to be the second-highest-grossing film of the year, after Rocky. Phew!
“Lately, I’m grateful to have music in my life to stand up to power. The first single from my new album, Walls, is called ‘Don’t Lie to Me.’ We have a president [Trump at the time] who lies without guilt, and I just can’t watch. I have to speak out or, in this case, sing out about my feelings.”
(Above: Streisand photographed by Demme)