 Good afternoon. Welcome to Coronavirus and our mental health. Today is January 18th, 2023. I'm Ken Burtonis, who usually comes to you from the North Shore, but today I'm in sunny downtown Honolulu in the studios of ThinkTek-A-Wai and enjoying it. We're having fun. Today's show, I think is a very good one. My guest is going to be Greg McDonald, who's not only my close friend, but also fellow movie buff. And we're going to be talking about acting and being real. Acting and being real. What does that have to do with coronavirus? Well, I'll tell you, coronavirus, and here's the update, and it's a very short one, is pretty much plateauing, which is great news because we're in the surge period, the surge period that carried us in 2020 and 2021-22, actually the two years combined, and in the holiday period. And we went sky high then and we didn't go sky high in 2022 to 23. So we've survived the holidays with no big spikes. But the problem is that it's still a pandemic and COVID is still here and it's still making people sick and people are still dying. And that's something that we've got to deal with and we've got to find a way to deal with that. And right now, people are just thinking, well, it's over. I don't have to mask. I don't have to stay away from big crowds. I can just go about my business like it was before the pandemic. Well, if you do, you're liable to get sick, not only from coronavirus, but also from the flu and from RSV, a respiratory virus. And they call those three things together, the triple pandemic. And that's really we're in. And that's what's getting people sick. Plus the fact that most of the data is underestimating. So that's a good news and not so good news. The key to all this is we still have to protect ourselves and we still have to protect other people. And we've talked about in the past. So I'll continue to give you coronavirus updates on that. One of the things that's been important with coronavirus is having support. During the lockdown, we were isolated. And we didn't have close friends or family by many of us. Or we were stuck with close friends and family, both of which could cause problems. But I'm especially concerned with the fact that being alone, you have no support. And who is going to support you during times like this? Well, friends are. And the key thing about friends is that we must be able to trust them. We must be able to be open with them. We must be able to let them know that we accept them for who they are. And they accept us for who we are. Which brings us to movies. And today Greg and I are going to talk about actresses. And he's got three actresses that he really liked to that he really likes. And he'd like to talk about the key to them for me and for other actresses that I like and follow is that they're not only good actresses, but they're good at being themselves in in the way and the way I mean it is they're good to accessing themselves. So if they have to play somebody who's grieving, they can access their own grief and bring that to the character and make that character believable. So that when you're watching him, you're not just saying, Oh, that's that's great. She's acting great in that. No, you're watching her and you believe her. Because she's real because she's accessing the real. Okay, with that introduction, let me turn it over to Greg because Greg's got three actresses that he really likes and I like him too. So let's talk about them and how they make us like them and how they become great actresses because of that. Greg, you're on. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, the three actresses that I picked three actresses actually it was very difficult. It would be like trying to pick if you had if you had three children, it's like trying to pick which one you like the best and you know, you see the best in all of them so you can't pick. So I'm going to talk a little bit about Emma Stone and Scarlett Johansson and Renee Zellweger. If we have the time just depends. But the subject still remains the same no matter where we go. So I'll start with Emma Stone. And I gotta qualify that my choice of the three given it was an impossible choice is these were three that I wish if I were younger, I could date. Let's get that out of the way. Okay, that was the first thing that attracted me to them not any of their acting qualities. All right. So so anyway, the first the first one Emma Stone. This when I first started thinking about today, and the show, I thought, okay, I should probably refresh my memory with some of the films that they have done. Because if you go and Google their name and list of films, you'll see that there's 405060 that you never heard of before. So most people have heard of the ones I'm going to mention. The first one that makes me think of Emma Stone is the first time I saw her, which is a movie called Easy A. And easy A is basically an updated version of the Scarlett letter. And if you're not familiar with the Scarlett letter, it's about a woman who had to wear an A on her. And it meant adulterous. And she was treated as an outsider. Although the updated version is her in high school. And there's a rumor going around that she is sort of having sex with everyone indiscriminately. And it's not true. That's her situation. Okay. And I think how it relates to what we're talking about today is how does she cope with that? And both in the role and as an actress. And first of all, if you see it, what you're going to see is that she is very intelligent. She doesn't play into the to the common thinking. She's not trying to please anybody. And so she's she's got this survival strength. But at the same time, she's sort of appealing. She's not survival in the sense of a combat. She's survival in just figuring out how do I tell the truth? And so that's that's that was her strength. It involved her being very clever on how to turn the situation completely around on her accusers and and then survive. Oddly enough, the second movie that I saw her do is when I switched from being, you know, wishing I could date her to going, wow, this gal really has some chops. And the movie was called Help, which if you saw, I was fabulous. It was set in the Deep South, probably around the 40s, 50s, time of civil rights and all that kind of stuff, or maybe just predating that. Anyway, she is she's a young journalist. And she's trying to figure out something about the situation down there. And she's with she meets these local women, black women who are like some would say still in slavery, but they're like housekeepers that are really seen as even less than housekeepers. And she wants to raise their awareness and get another one of them to to write about the situation. But they they won't because if they do they're they're going to they fear more scorn against themselves. What I think she showed in this was an amazing ability not just to be a cute little high school girl, but to be a young aspiring journalist in a situation where being a young white girl really is adds difficulty to what she wants to do. And there again, I think you see her ability to portray courage and intelligence and to not only take a stand, but to follow it through all the way. In other words, there were times in both those movies where she could have stopped a fight and just kind of played in. But she didn't do that in either one. So in that way, she's kind of demonstrating the same skill set, but in a completely different environment. Yeah, I think the key thing here, you know, is exactly what you're saying. But she adds something different. If you look at easy a her decision is not an easy one to come by. She inadvertently starts the rumor, and it gets out of hand and nobody's listening to her when she says it's not. I really didn't do this. They're not listening to her. And she is sort of being singled out and she likes it. We all like being singled out. We all like being the center of attention. But the center of attention has a real downside. And she discovers that she discovers how difficult it is to be in that limelight, but she also discovers how difficult it is to change and get out of that limelight. So she's in a place that she doesn't like and she's stuck in there. And she's really trying to find it. I think that's what really makes her human and makes us understand her as a person is that this is not an easy task for her. And it's not an easy task and the help either. The help is puts her at odds with her basic peer group and her community, because she sees what people are doing to the black women who are acting as maids in their community, which is in the south, by the way. And she is faced with the fact that can she stand up and do this and she's beset with can I or should I or what would happen if I did and we see all that struggle, we see her coming from somebody who is sort of gliding through and doing well, but then put in this impossible position and she's got to deal with it. And the nice thing about Emma Stone and the other actresses that you talk about is they don't have to depend upon somebody to come in and rescue them. She finds a way to rescue herself, to be herself, to change in the way that she wants to change and become the person that she wants to become. In easy A, she's basically by herself and driving the movie. She's the central force in the help. She's surrounded by wonderful actresses and supporting people who she has to interact with. And part of her character is how she deals with these people rather than in addition to her struggle with herself. So in many ways, Emma Stone is a guideline to us on how to become the better us. And I think that that's particularly been difficult during the COVID lockdown and isolation. Okay. Yeah. You want to go on to Scarlett? Is that it? No, I want to mention one last film that probably doesn't need too much explanation on Emma. This will be very short. Yeah. Yeah. And then we'll go on to the other ones. Yeah. Yeah. Scarlett. La La Land. And the reason I'm thinking La La Land is to is to emphasize her flexibility because La La Land involves song and dance and comedy and drama. And it's all about actors and musicians in LA trying to have a vision of make of making it. And they're stuck in this dilemma of if I if I make it, I may lose this person that I'm falling in love with because they will fall in my trail. And that's a struggle that plays out. And I thought I picked that one purposely because of the contrast between the first two. The first two were really more painful struggles. And so was La La Land. But La La Land was a musical and song and dance. And you still see the struggle in there. So that's all I want to say about La La Land, Ken, if you want to add anything to it. She won the Oscar for La La Land. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it takes a while for actresses to get recognized. They don't usually get an Oscar for their first great performance or even their second or third great performance. It takes a while for people to really understand and relate to somebody. You know, whoever the actress is and by the time La La Land came around is people were finally saying, wow, this is a lady who carries us with her. Okay, maybe just one of the next two so we can get to the others as well. So you want to do Scarlett or you want to do Renee? Well, Scarlett. Okay. Yeah, we can go any way you want. Scarlett Johansson. The first time I saw her was in Lost in Translation, which was by far not her first movie. But it was the first time I ever saw her and she's very young. I don't know what age. She looked like maybe she was barely 20. And I just found her appeal in the falling in love question. Is she really in love with this older man? Or is she just sort of playing around and not really serious? And so I watched her in that and I thought, wow, this is kind of interesting. I couldn't really figure out where she was coming from. And there's a scene at the very end where the two of them are going to part their ways after looking like they were going to be a couple even though that age was different. And she whispers something in his ear and he sort of nods his head. But they never tell us what she said. And to this day, I wish I knew what she said to him because that was kind of the end of the movie. Okay. So that was the first time I saw her. That was my first impression. Kind of a young 20 flirtatious but yet hard to read exactly what her intention was. The next one that comes to mind that I think really caught my attention that, wow, she's not just a young flirtatious kind of cute kid was probably many years later. I'm not sure. It's called under under the skin where she's dressed in a black rubber bodysuit. And as far as we know, she's alien. And it's very hard to follow the movie because there are scenes in there that are standalone. And I think that what you come away with is that she can play a very abstract part without without really giving away much. You don't really know why she's in this suit and why at times the suit is being taken off. And I to what we're dealing with today, I see that kind of the idea of we all wear a person's suit to pretty tight to to navigate various parts of society that we're in. And so I think that's kind of what the theme of the movie was, but it was extremely abstract. And the last thing I want to say in terms of her variety here is mention first two one very quickly her where she's only playing a voice like a like a like a computer voice that forms a relationship and you fall so in love with her voice that you don't even need to see her. I thought that was that was another element of her magic to be able to drop into being a voice that could interact with somebody and we really felt her presence without seeing her. And I think her best movie, in my opinion, was Jojo Rabbit where she was playing the mother basically during the Nazi occupation, trying to raise a little boy and keep him protected from some of the Nazi doings while at the same time trying to be a mother. And so that was that all three of those required very different skill sets from her. So let me toss it back to you on that, Ken. Yeah, the thing about Scarlett that I would I would like to add to that is she's fearless. If you take a look at all her pictures, like the one that you're talking about, she tackles things that other actresses would not tackle under the skin being a prime example. Lucy's another one. Lucy's one of these great ones that is feminine power without the need for masculine power to come in and rescue the damsel in distress. She's goes out there and she not only kicks Coley, if you will, but she does it in a intellectual way as well as a physical way. She just surmounts all these problems and it's an amazing movie and a very difficult one to make. And another one was Hale Caesar where she plays this not the most pleasant actress, she's playing an actress, an actress playing an actress in Hollywood and you're looking at her like she is really a piece of work. And then she then we transfer over to like you say Jojo Rabbit where she is so heart-rending. The ending scene where you know that that final scene of hers just left me in tears and and a lot of actresses would shy away from a lot of her roles but she just has tackled everything and I think that's what people need to be is fearless because if you're there and and you're sort of putting on a face or you're acting because you're afraid they're not going to like you, they're afraid you're not going to be their friend and it's hard to show yourself to these people. To do that you have to be fearless and that's one of the things to me with Scarlett Johansson did for us is that she showed it was like I'm not afraid to do this you know if this goes south you know and it's not seen as a great picture or I'm not seen as a great actress in this so be it but I've got to try this and I can do this. She's got confidence and she's fearless and like you said before tremendous ability to be in all genres from you know from comedy to to grieving to to strong you know she's amazing actress. Maybe we can skip the next one and go to the Academy Awards because I think we're running short on time. One of the reasons that Greg and I decided to focus on actresses you notice we didn't focus on actors today we could do the same with actors but we were focusing on actresses because in less than a week the Academy Award nominations are coming out and I and for the pundits who are predicting who is going to be nominated within this week there's pretty much a two-person race going on between Kate Blanchett and Michelle Yeoh now recently Michelle Williams is also sort of got in the mix I mean there's a number of other wonderful actresses that have done wonderful things at 2000 at 22 but right now it's looking at a two maybe a three horse race if you'll excuse the expression and these three are tremendous actresses Kate Blanchett who's doing tar I know is somebody that you like Greg so maybe you can tell us a little bit about her and your feelings toward her well in a big I yeah in a general way I I she she has never felt to me like like the first three or the first two that we talked about where I had some attraction to them and wish I was young enough to date them she I don't think she ever pulled that part out of me her roles that I most remember are kind of adult and I don't know what I mean by that just sort of less cute you know um but tar intrigued me for a couple of reasons first of all again we talk about we've talked about risk you've covered that really well and I see her again in a movie that is very risky um and I haven't I have read one review on it that really criticized her because she was sort of saying anything against like the the cancel culture or the transsexual culture or she was in other words she she said whatever she wanted to say and I guess I guess a lot of it for the reviewer was pretty insulting actually that review made me want to see the movie so it didn't scare me away it made me want to to go okay I want to see somebody in a movie do that that created so much controversy by this one reviewer the other reason I think that so anyway um she also uh she also was wonderful because I'm a musician and she's a musician so a lot of music themes kind of played their way in and out of the movie I think it's a brilliant movie I hope it wins something even if she doesn't win best actress if the readers our audience here would take a look at the previews for tar you'll see that in addition to the stuff that Greg has talked about she is losing it throughout the movie she is losing her control if things are coming in and she is in the arc not the arc going up but the art sort of unraveling and this is an incredibly strong woman that she's playing and Kate Blanchett is great at doing that uh you know I'd pick her for you want a strong female you can't do better than Kate Blanchett she's one of the the great actresses of her generations and her movies will stand up to that but um she shows you in that arc the change in how inside and how psychologically it's doing and how difficult it is for us so we see not only her strength but her struggle and uh it it promises to be a great movie and talk about uh different movies though if you want to see a different movie from Kate Blanchett you want to see I'm not there where she among another other actresses all men by the way portray Bob Dylan in the Bob Dylan sort of strange biography of I'm not there and her playing Bob Dylan is a sight to see um the other thing my favorite movie from Kate Blanchett is where did you go Bernadette where she plays not the strong character she plays a very talented smart character but uh she sort of been out of favor and she's looking for something she's not all not only out of favor professionally but uh she's having difficulty with family and herself and where she's going to go so um and she does it incredibly well you're just so with her and you so want this to turn out okay because she's just doing such a a wonderful thing so it's uh it's a magnificent thing uh the only thing that I would add because we're down to about the last three minutes is Michelle Yeo um and I'm betting on her for the Academy Award uh nomination and the Academy Award not because uh she's a better actress than Kate Blanchett they are both outstanding actresses but Michelle Yeo has been with us since uh Crouching Lion uh Hidden Dragon uh over 20 years she's been with us doing wonderful work and has not been recognized as an Asian actress she's not been given her due and when she's offered a part in Hawaii not in Hawaii but in the US a part like playing a James Bond girl she does it so brilliantly but she's always offered these parts that are very restrictive and it's only recently uh that we've been able to diversify enough to see here and things like uh Crazy Rich Asians uh and the one that she's up for this year everything everywhere all at once um she is so good and has been so unrecognized all these other actresses that we've talked about have Academy Awards Academy Award nominations she has yet to receive and it's and I think the Academy is saying for the first time we've got to right this wrong and so whatever your opinions are of the actresses I think this is the way it's going to play out here and well it should because we need to open up our vistas because we can learn from all these actresses Michelle Yeo, Kate Blanchett, Emma Stone all of the ones that we've talked about we can learn on a personal basis how to be our better selves and how to deal with something like the coronavirus uh Greg last minute thoughts we're down to the wire I wish the theaters would get back to showing more movies every day here in Hawaii all we see is the choice is two movies and then the same two movies for weeks and weeks and weeks none of the ones that are Oscar nominated are even here yeah and I think yeah and if they were here they they left really quickly with the exception of you know the big blockbusters like Avatar for instance our Babylon but they're not we're not going to see much of them in the Academy Awards except maybe the smaller uh you know things they're going to be I'm looking forward to both of them is really fine pictures but as far as acting goes and we're talking about acting today and the difference between acting and being real I don't think you're going to see near as much of them as the ones that Greg's are Greg is talking about that we've missed Greg thank you so much for being here this is Greg's fourth visit uh on the program and he's always a great addition it's always great talking with you Greg I also want to say thank you to the think tech staff especially Eric who's gotten me through the in-studio session but also Haley and Jay and Michael and everybody else and thank you to the audience for tuning in and listening to us it's always a pleasure and if you ever have any questions or any things that you'd like to comment on the show please email think tech Hawaii and it'll get to us and we'll cover it thanks again Aloha thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on Vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram and linked in and donate to us at think tech hawaii.com Mahalo