Unless you live under a rock, you may know that the 21st century's answer to Norma Desmond, the inimtable Miss Faye Dunaway, has for a very long time been working on her film adaptation of Master Class, Terrence McNally's searching look at the life and times of Maria Callas, through the lens of the series of classes she gave at Juilliard in 1971-72.
She has now tweeted a production still from the work-still-in-progress, Michael Musto spread the news, and I'm not sure what to think. Actually, I do know what to think, and it's not nice. You would think that the worst-case scenario, for any associate of Miss Dunaway's over the past 25 years, would be to bring into play any aspect of wardrobe, hair, or makeup that recalls her cinematic Waterloo, the incredible Mommie Dearest, Hollywood's poison-pen valentine to the memory of Joan Crawford. If this picture is to be believed, they have not only done that (I'd swear that's actually a wig from the first half of MD, before Joan's hair went Champagne with age), but the passage of all these years means that Faye's once-vaunted resemblance to Crawford has faded, replaced, to my eye, with something even more regal:
Yes, it's the beloved matriarch of Egypt's 18th Dynasty, Queen Tiye (Nefertiti's mother-in-law and Tutankhamun's grandmother). Startling, isn't it?
