Black Swan Songs

I’ve been admiring Kristen Wiig in bit parts (ADVENTURELAND, KNOCKED UP)  for a while now, but I hadn’t watched enough Saturday Night Live (SNL) to discover that she is a comic genius…until I watched her host the SNL primetime Christmas special as Gilly.

With Gilly – the little trouble-causing, Orphan Annie-resembling minx – Wiig’s face becomes elastic, her voice and spacious timing dastardly neurotic while her eyes bug right out of her head. You can tell that Wiig has fine-tuned her comic skills with more than 10,000 hours of rehearsal. Improvization requires a poker face…and she’s got that nailed too as she never even comes close to breaking character (Jimmy Falon anyone?). With years of training as a member of The Groundlings, her focus and comic timing leave some of the other SNL cast members appearing amateurish and boring.

Digging up the best holiday related clips from season 1 to the present, the entire special was hilarious, but it was the Gilly character that forever sold me on Wiig’s mighty thespian powers.

The Gilly character and her childish desire to create anarchy while remaining mostly silent holds a mirror up to society. She becomes both light and dark, good and evil…and Wiig abandons her mastery of sarcasm with Gilly. Sadistic and adorable, Gilly is Wiig at her most brilliant…rolling the entirety of the dark chaos of the human condition into a character that barely speaks. It’s both creative and creepy…and I totally understand why they had Wiig host the Christmas clips show as Gilly.

I absolutely get it…and it’s genius. Look for Wiig to become SNL’s next break-out superstar.

Editors note: More than a year and a half later we’re watching Wiig open the comedy hit as the lead in BRIDESMAIDS, proving she is indeed bankable at the box office; we already knew she had the charisma and chops to be a leading lady.

Fashion designer and director Tom Ford makes his model work.

As Tom Ford jumps from career to career, from fashion design to filmmaking, I find myself fascinated by his life story. Born in Austin to realtor parents, Ford’s family moved around Texas a bit before settling in Sante Fe (one of the cities on the hippie trail that leads up the West Coast). Ford left Santa Fe to attend New York University at age 17; then he dropped out of NYU after a year to focus on modeling and acting. Ford found time to study at prestigious art schools in New York during the Studio 54 days. Later, he provided the artistic vision that resurrected the Gucci fashion line as well as their overall brand. Ford would go on to start his own line, complete with a few boutiques spread around the world. And that is where my Ford appreciation burns hottest: the man knows how to design clothes…from head to toe, glasses to shoes.

And did I mention his clothes. I have no idea how much they cost, but I know their expensive, becauseno prices listed on his online store. Perhaps Ford will one day expand his brand to include the middle class…

…or maybe his brand will remain a fashion-forward lifestyle that we can aspire to.

Tom Ford’s directorial debut A SINGLE MAN is garnering rave reviews in limited release around the United States. Blackswansongs.com looks forward to viewing it.