I just paid my bills for the month and I am so broke. I feel like Mattie Michael from The Women of Brewster Place.
Has anyone else seen this movie? It was so sad, but so funny.
The film, which starred Oprah Winfrey and a virtual who’s who of late 80’s early 90s black stars (Jackee, Cicely Tyson, Leon, Robin Givens), was about the various women who lived in a Chicago housing projects and featured two of television’s first lesbian women of color (roles played by Paula Kelley and Lonette McKey).
My favorite scene reads:
Theresa: Lorraine, you're a lesbian. Do you understand that word? A butch, a dyke, a lesbo, all those things that kid was shouting. Yes, I heard him! And you can run in all the basements in the world, and it won't change that, so why don't you accept it?
Lorraine: [angrily] I have accepted it! I've accepted it all my life, and it's nothing I'm ashamed of. I lost a father because I refused to be ashamed of it, but it doesn't make me different from anyone else in the world!
Theresa: It makes you damned different!
Lorraine: [jerking open bottom drawer of her dresser and pulling out her underwear] Do you see this? There are two things that have been constant in my life since I was sixteen years old: beige bras and oatmeal. The day before I first fell in love with a woman, I got up, had oatmeal for breakfast, and put on a beige bra. I was no different the day before or after that happened, Tee.
Theresa: And what did you do when you went to school that next day, Lorraine? Did you stand around the gym locker and swap stories with the other girls about this new love in your life, huh? While they were bragging about their boyfriends and the fifty dozen ways they had lost their virginity, did you jump in and say, 'Oh, but you should have seen the one I gave it up to last night?' Huh? Did you? Did you?
[grabbing Lorraine's underwear]
Theresa: You with your beige bras and oatmeal! Why didn't you stand in that locker room and pass around a picture of this great love in your life?
Lorraine: [quietly] Because they wouldn't have understood.
Theresa: That's right! There go your precious 'theys' again. They wouldn't undertand, not in Detroit, not on Brewster Place, not anywhere! And as long as they own the whole damn world, it's them and us, Sister! Them and us. And that spells different!
(you better say it!)
And right now my bank account spells broke!
8 comments:
Awwwww. But you'll get paid again in 2 weeks (right?)
you wont feel that way for much longer... Like Dusty said, you will be paid again!
i LOVE that scene too! They both acted their asses off :)
I need to go and really watch this movie again!
I own the DVD. A few of the significant parts were edited out. Speaking of old Oprah Winfrey movies, have you seen "There Are No Children Here"?
good ole Mattie...whatever happened to her?
You have me wanting to see "The Women of Brewster Place" just for that scene!!
Losojosnuevos!!! I saw "There Are No Children Here" and was damn near in tears!!
I thought the best scene was with the nosy next door neighbor and the ground round..."I saw you.."
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