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CALLING THE SHOTS
Goldie Hawn,
having previously directed only for television, is
currently behind the camera in India
for her first
theatrical feature: Ashes 2 Ashes .
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IT’S NOT THE first time she’s played an ex - remember the 1996 hit The First Wives Club (motto: Don’t Get Mad, Get Everything). But in Ashes 2 Ashes, Goldie Hawn will be playing an ex with a difference. Well, several differences, actually. For starters, she’s co-written the screenplay for the film - which is currently shooting in North America and India - with John Krokidas and Jeremy Pikser (whose previous credits include The Lemon Sisters and Bulworth).
And then there’s the fact that, this time, Hawn’s character is not motivated by revenge or even resentment: tenderness would come closest to explaining why she does what she does. She has a good job and is totally committed to it. But, when her ex-husband dies, his final request brings her busy life to a halt: he has asked for his ashes to be scattered in India. So off she sets…
The real difference, though, between Ashes 2 Ashes and all those other films in which Hawn’s unique brand of comic schtick made you both feel sorry for her and sympathise with the man who was supposed to be making her life a misery, is that the new film will mark her debut as a feature-film director, after almost 40 years in the business. Bollywood star Gulshan Grover is understood to be acting as a consultant on the Indian sections of the movie.
With one Oscar - for Best Supporting Actress in Cactus Flower (1969) - and three Best Actress nominations (one for an Oscar with Private Benjamin, and two at BAFTA in successive years for Cactus Flower and There’s a Girl in My Soup in 1969-70) to her name, the 59-year-old Hawn has actually stepped behind the camera once before. But that was for the less than memorable 1997 TV movie Hope, which starred Christine Lahti and Jena Malone.
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