O, Death

ELAINE STRITCH: SHOOT ME (A-minus) - This is a fascinating rumination on how we live our lives and how we see it to the end. This type of film could have been done with any person as its subject (in the "ordinary people" category), but it certainly helps here to have sassy stage legend Elaine Stritch, who once put the "broad" in Broadway, as the center of attention. As always, she's a hoot.

The camera follows Stritch as she winds down her career as a torch singer, fumbling her lines during rehearsals and suffering various medical setbacks, coming to terms with the fact that her days in the limelight are numbered. As she approaches age 87, she knows, too, that her days in the daylight are numbered, as well.

Chiemi Karasawa, known for most of her career as a script supervisor, directs her first film here, and she rides her star's coattails well. Karasawa also shows a sure hand in balancing the sweet with the bittersweet. She lets Stritch do her "theater people" thing, vamping with her entourage, killing it on stage with her music director, and horsing around with her hip "30 Rock" pals.  She also spins entertaining tales. She had a date with JFK and regrets not snapping up Ben Gazzara when she had the chance; though she did end up with the love of her life, John Bay of the English muffin family. One bawdy confession she makes during a dinner date leaves John Turturro speechless.

Your tolerance for Stritch may vary. (I always like to think of her as the very first Trixie Norton in a nascent "Honeymooners" sketch, ca. 1951.) She's definitely a diva with a long history of alcohol abuse. After more than 20 years of sobriety, she started, in her 80s, to allow herself one drink a day, and you savor it along with her. A clip from around 1970, of Stritch in studio recording a soundtrack, shows her acting like a brat and looking haggard, certainly older than 45.

Stritch here bravely puts herself on display, for better and for worse. She still looks sharp in her trademark tights (covering those long chicken legs) and oversized men's dress shirt. But we also get to see her waking up in the morning and in the hospital during a weeklong stay, battling diabetes and old-fashioned old age. Eventually we see her shopping for a home back in the suburbs of Detroit, where she grew up. (Last year, she finally packed up her things at Manhattan's Carlyle Hotel and moved to the sticks.)

This all plays much better than "Ain't in It for My Health," the skin-deep documentary featuring Levon Helm of The Band. Karasawa took her time and patiently peeled away a few layers from Stritch's tough exterior. Stritch anxiously hypothesizes about what awaits her at the end. The result is both melancholy and life-affirming.

BONUS TRACK
Stritch, in a previous HBO special, deconstructing Sondheim's lyrics in "I Feel Pretty."