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LETTERS FROM WAKE ROBIN FARM

Jennifer Anniston's movie "Cake"

I was intrigued when I heard Jennifer Anniston was making a movie—"Cake"—starring herself as a woman addicted to narcotic painkillers. Since I never watched "Friends" when it first aired, I had been finding Jen and the rest of the cast great company in the middle of the night as I suffered through withdrawal from Oxycodone myself, and I couldn’t wait to see how she would handle this drastically different role that currently hit so close to home for me.

The movie was supposed to come out in January, but week after week it failed to appear in our theatres. Or theatres anywhere. Finally it turned out it had gone straight to video. I watched it May, as soon as I could get it from Netflix.

Was it simply because I could so identify with the character’s misery that this film resonated with me? Did other people see only an unlikeable, bitchy woman for whom they could muster no empathy? By the revelatory ending, Jennifer Anniston had broken my heart.

I felt especially bummed for her as an actress, to somehow have her big shot at an Oscar be summarily dismissed this way. Seriously, I thought she was great. She had me in tears. It’s as if because she is basically so damned cute and has such spot-on comic timing, nobody wants to watch her step up to be front and center in a dramatic, decidedly non-cute role.

People often seem to think the rich and famous are too rich and famous to care about this sort of thing, but I’ll bet she felt really bad. Just wanted to point out that one person out here appreciated her efforts.





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