An excellent blogathon began over the weekend, sparked by this post at All About Movies (incidentally, this is a testament to the great democratizing power of the blogosphere: the post was written by Emma, a British high school student who admits in her Blogger profile that her site “sometimes shifts into fashion-blog, or even worse, hormonal teenage girl-blog.”) The theme? Performances That Changed My Life.

My favorite contribution so far is Self-Styled Siren’s entry on Ginger Roger’s turn as an acid-tongued chorine in 42nd Street. The Siren offers eight lessons that she learned from Annie. Lesson #2 involves the crucial relationship between self-confidence and risky fashion: “When Anytime Annie enters, she is wearing tweeds and a monocle. And, in the modern parlance, she rocks them.” Other very-good entries include Peter Nellhaus on Sean Connery in From Russia With Love; and Nathaniel R’s take on the great ghost-singer Marti Nixon’s work in West Side Story.

Since it’s Tuesday, and thus time for another entry of The Micro Five, I thought I’d just offer a handful of performances that impacted me in some great way. Except this week there are only three, because I couldn’t think of five performances that qualified as “life-changing”, and I didn’t want to have to qualify the list with a “this one didn’t exactly *change* my life, but but but…” If you want to produce a response list, send it over to Emma so she add it to the ever-growing tally.

1. Bill Murray, Ghostbusters

The afternoon that I watched Ghostbusters for the first time (on VHS, aged six) is my earliest memory of feeling sexual attraction to another human being. Bill Murray was hardly an adonis in 1984 (or ever), and even at six, I think I knew that, but I was drawn to this strange, pock-marked man nonetheless. I even remember the exact moment of the film that did it for me: Ray and Peter have just been kicked out of the University, and they’re standing on the steps to the library, passing back and forth a bottle of booze. Ray is afraid of getting a real job; Peter, rocking back and forth on his heels, tells his partner that they were destined to lose their jobs so that they could start their own paranormal investigation agency. To this day, I’m still attracted to wild-eyed drunks with crackpot schemes, but now I try to pick specimens with better skin.

2. Judy Garland, Summer Stock

A Star is Born features my *favorite* Garland performance (maybe my favorite performance by any actress in any film ever), but her work in this minor Gene Kelly star vehicle had a far greater impact on my life. Summer was Judy’s last film at MGM; she was dropped from her contract shortly after filming completed, due to mood swings, lateness, wild weight fluctuations, and general drug-fueled erratic behavior. When I first watched the film, I knew nothing about Garland or her legendary troubles, but it was nonetheless apparent that there were two Judys on screen: the plump, scared-looking Judy who slogs through the bulk of the film as a farmer who reluctantly gives up her barn to her sister’s theater company; and the svelte, besuited spark plug who Fosses her way through the next-to-last number, “Get Happy.” The incredible discrepancy between the two Judys sent me on a search to dig up all the information I could find, first about the production of the film, and then about Judy’s embattled career. It was the first event that led me to transition from making films (badly) to writing about them.

3. Glynis Johns, Mary Poppins (above)

Who wants to hang at a fantasy carnival with a practically perfect flying nanny when mom’s trying to radicalize the kitchen help? Johns, as the singing suffragette who hires the title character to look after her brood while she’s out rallying, puts gentle, cherubic face on militant feminism. Set against the shrill, mannish Julie Andrews, Johns looks all the more appealing. Put it this way: I never wanted a spoon full of sugar as much as I longed to grow up to be a a soldier in a petticoat, marching through the streets of London, casting off the shackles of yesterday.

Earlier installments of The Micro Five:

Improbable Werner Herzog Anecdotes
Unplanned Movie Pregnancies