{"id":3405,"date":"2011-02-02T18:54:43","date_gmt":"2011-02-02T23:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andrewbaseman.com\/blog\/?p=3405"},"modified":"2024-03-16T18:57:28","modified_gmt":"2024-03-16T22:57:28","slug":"holly-hunter-in-the-piano-1993","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/?p=3405","title":{"rendered":"Holly Hunter in THE PIANO, 1993"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Piano<\/em>, a 1993 film directed by Jane Campion and starring Holly Hunter as Ada McGrath, a mute pianist, and Anna Paquin as her daughter Flora (both Oscar winners for their performances), contains a poignant &#8220;make-do&#8221; that must be noted in these virtual pages. In the course of the film, Ada has her right index finger severed by her jealous husband in a fit of rage, depriving her of the ability to play her piano. In the film&#8217;s epilogue, Ada&#8217;s new lover has created for her a riveted&nbsp;silver&nbsp;&#8220;make-do&#8221; replacement finger, complete with a finger nail, which allows her to play the piano once more. I love a happy ending, especially when an inventive repair is crucial to the outcome!<\/p>\n<p>I attended Carnegie Mellon University&#8217;s School of Drama, earning a degree in set design, while Holly Hunter was studying acting. Her immense talent was evident even then, though she had a difficult time masking her thick Georgian accent. How appropriate that she won her Oscar playing a mute. Years later I worked as a set decorator on a film directed by Jane Campion, but never had the chance to tell her how much I liked the final frames of <em>The Piano<\/em> and Holly&#8217;s make-do finger.<\/p>\n<p>The film&#8217;s poster shows a tender moment between Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel as her lover Baines. Notice that her right hand still has its index finger intact.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/MPW-20185_2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5026\" title=\"MPW-20185_2\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/MPW-20185_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"525\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/MPW-20185_2.jpg 400w, http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/MPW-20185_2-228x300.jpg 228w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A beautifully made silver replacement finger allows the ivories to be tickled once again&#8230;Fade out.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/piano3x.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-5036\" title=\"piano3x\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/piano3x.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"399\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/piano3x.jpg 399w, http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/piano3x-300x163.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 399px) 100vw, 399px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Poster and photo courtesy of&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.miramax.com\/\">Miramax<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Piano, a 1993 film directed by Jane Campion and starring Holly Hunter as Ada McGrath, a mute pianist, and Anna Paquin as her daughter Flora (both Oscar winners for their performances), contains a poignant &#8220;make-do&#8221; that must be noted in these virtual pages. In the course of the film, Ada has her right index [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[149],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdotal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3405"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17142,"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions\/17142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.andrewbaseman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}