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Thoughts on a winner at the 2005 Academy Awards. |
Hilary Swank, named best actress in the 2005 Academy Awards for her performance as Maggie in the best-directed best movie, Million Dollar Baby, says she personally connected to her character:
I can relate, because [like Maggie] I lived in a trailer when I was growing up, and my mom didn't have a lot of money.... So when I read this script that made me laugh and cry, and inspired me, I said, "OK, I've got to go live as a boxer."[Hilary Swank lands new shot at an Oscar, Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 6, 2005.]
Swank recalls that when she was 15, her mom "was at a crossroads. My father and her were getting separated, and she said, 'Let's go to California.' And so $75, and a Mobil card, we drove down to California."
They lived in the car for a couple of weeks. "We had a friend who was selling their house. And so they said, 'You know, there's no furniture, but you can stay there at night. And then, during the day, you have to leave so we can try and sell it,'" says Swank. "So we got air mattresses. Blew the air mattresses up. Slept on the air mattresses. And left in the morning."
Notice: Movie Spoilers Follow
The Clint Eastwood movie indulges right-wingers by presenting Maggie's mom as a poster child for the poverty-class, welfare-cheating, trailer park trash whom they love to loathe. Eastwood looks like he wants to vomit whenever Frankie, the noble character he plays, lays eyes on the mom. She is vulgar, low, fat, lazy, ungrateful, greedy, and bereft of maternal instincts. She has never supported Maggie's aspirations (to work hard—terribly hard!—and achieve her dreams). And when Maggie is tragically paralyzed and bed-ridden (not because of any honest turn of fate but, inevitably, because of an act of evil treachery), the mom visits her in hospital, a chubby, contemptible-looking lawyer in tow, and sticks a pen in Maggie's mouth (her hands don't work) so she can sign legal papers to turn the wealth which that hard work has earned her over to her mom.
"It's what your father would have wanted," the mom urges Maggie, exploiting her daughter's faint and mournful memories of her long-departed dad to prod her to sign over the cash.
Such are the fairy tales that nourish right-wingers and give them their sense of the world. But Swank's real-life mom turns the right-wing fantasy on its head. The Philadelphia Inquirer report notes a "key difference" between the real mom and Eastwood's creation:
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