Ford Cares~ Warriors in Pink
When I first saw the commercial for Five I think I was watching another station completely. Seldom am I watching Lifetime if it is not a Sunday or Drop Dead Diva. I am more than GRATEFUL that advertisements now occur on other channels, otherwise I would not have known about this wonderful event. I look forward to viewing these five short films.
I am torn between recapping and expressing what I think during each short I will see. I think I will do a combination of both. So, here we go.
Charlotte
Directed by Demi Moore
Written by Stephen Godchaux
Starring Ginnifer Goodwin
This piece is starting off rather slowly. I get what is happening, but it seems to be dragging and taking forever for me to figure out who everyone is and what is going on. So Charlotte (Ginnifer Goodwin) is sick and she has a daughter,Pearl(Ava Acres), who doesn’t know she is dying. This is all taking place around the time that America is on the verge of walking on the moon.
So, judging from the slip of the tongue of a cousin, pearl learns that her mother has “bread cancer”. She is going away to her aunt’s house for a while. The same aunt that attempted to steal her mother’s necklace until Pearl caught her and called her out on it. The maid allowed her to run and see her mother when no one else would allow her into the room.
So Pearl grew up and became a doctor, I’m assuming she is into breast cancer research.
The story, though touching was very, very, very slow. It took a minute for the point of the short to come to life. We all knew from the beginning that the mother was sick and possibly dying, which made the entire scene anti-climatic for me. But, I get the point of the short.
Mia
Directed by Jennifer Anniston
Written by Wendy West
Starring Patricia Clarkson
I am trying to keep a straight face as I watch Monk (Tony Shalhoub) portray a serious role, Mitch Taylor.
Wow! The character Mia was suffering from breast cancer. She was under the impression that she was supposed to die so she treated people poorly, she turned her IRA into expensive earrings, she drank expensive champagne every day and used up her life savings and even had a funeral for herself while she was still living.
*gasps* She said, “…to let me get off what is left of my chest.” WOW! No line within this entire series is going to hit me as hard as that line right there. That spoke volumes. The way she told Lynn to sit her ass down made me laugh.
This short is BRILLIANT!!!!! I am laughing and on the brink of tears at the blunt yet audaciousness of this event that people wish they had the strength to execute in real life.
Cheyanne
Directed by Penelope Spheeris
Written by Howard Morris
Starring Lyndsy Fonseca
So this girl, Cheyanne ( Lyndsy Fonseca), is an exotic dancer who finds out that she has breast cancer. This girl is young. WOW! That hit home more than any one of these other shorts. You don’t hear of young girls my age with breast cancer. You always hear that it was someone’s mother, someone’s grandmother, but you never hear a twenty something year old having her man find her cancer lump during sex.
This skit just made me start feeling my breast. SERIOUSLY! This short just scared the crap out of me. But I can’t tell if I have a lump. Is that stupid? I mean, how does a lump feel? I have HUGE breasts so how do I tell a lump from fat tissue? I am literally scared and clueless as I type this. Talk about an eye opener.
I love this short because it shows the struggles that the men in our lives have to face when dealing with breast cancer. It lets us know that we are not the only ones who have to deal with breast cancer, well not figuratively. Her husband, Tommy (Taylor Kinney) goes and gets his hair shaved in support of the struggle that his wife is about to go through. How sweet.
WOW!!! They showed her chest after her mastectomy and the scars were low and I now understand how females feel that their womanhood is at stake. I guess, having had huge breasts majority of my life, I have always wanted smaller breasts. But looking at this short, it showed me what is at stake. WOW! I don’t want to sound insensitive, but she didn’t have a feminine chest, in the traditional sense. But until he opened her jacket, I never even noticed that she didn’t have her breasts. So it was a dual revelation; I got to see how a chest looks after a double mastectomy but then I realized that the breasts do not make a woman. She was very much still Cheyanne before I saw her chest. This is, so far, my second favorite short. Mia is still in first place.
Lili
Directed by Alicia Keys
Written by Jill Gordon
Starring Rosario Dawson
I am LOVING that this is going to show how breast cancer affects African American women. Odd because I am learning, through this entire project how it affects WOMEN in general no matter the color. Lili (Rosario Dawson) seems to be that stuck-up lawyer and (Tracee Ellis-Ross is her sister) as the sister blurts out to their mother, Maggie (Jenifer Lewis), that Lili has early stages of cancer.
The mother is making me want to scream at the television. Did you NOT hear that your daughter is having a lumpectomy? And you are more worried that she attends a wedding and then you can’t reschedule your day to support her!!!!!!!! THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE WORLD! Wait, am I really upset at these fictitious characters? Wow, this is really affecting me. Ummm… is Mr. Dinlear (Jeffrey Tambor) portraying a man who has been diagnosed with breast cancer?
Wait, the mother walks in with information about Warriors in Pink? Side note: I want a Warriors in Pink shirt.
I get the outrageousness of this skit, but at some point this is a bit over the top. Could the black people get the Charlotte scene? But okay, at least Jeffrey is bringing the point of this foolishness back home, at least they are there supporting her (in their own demented way) and she should be thankful because not everyone has that kind of support.
The moment in the bathroom between Lili and her sister was very touching. I saw my sister and I in that scene. I am realizing that this is a WOMAN’s battle. This is about WOMEN! Every woman watching this should be seeing themselves or a woman they know in at least one of these short films.
The ending was AMAZING!!!! I am Lili. I have never asked my family for a thing. MESSAGE!
Pearl
Directed by Patty Jenkins
Written by Deirdre O’Connor
Starring Jeanne Tripplehorn
So remember the short film Charlotte? The daughter,Pearl, has grown up to become an oncologist and she has been the doctor for all of these women in the shorts mentioned above. She has been diagnosed with breast cancer after having helped several women through this tumultuous time in their life.
She can finally understand what no one tried to assist her with on that night in 1969 when her mother was dying and no one briefed her. Her father tried to defend his reasoning for not telling her that he mother was dying. She reveals to her father that she has breast cancer when he refuses to tell her any more information about that night.
Pearl decides to tell her daughter Charlotte ( who is named after her mother) that she has breast cancer.Pearlgives her daughter the same necklace that he mother gave her as a child.
Pearl beats breast cancer and everyone who has survived, all of her patients, come to the kiss the tile ceremony. Cheyanne passed away but her husband and daughter come to the ceremony. Lili made it with her sister and mother. Mia shows up with her new husband. And it is so very touching to see Pearl put her lipstick on just as her mother had. The kiss the tile idea seems to have come from when her mother kissed her picture as a child. WOW!
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I have to say, Jennifer Anniston and the other wonderful directors and writers have outdone themselves with this one. I was unaware that this was a production to promote Breast Cancer awareness, I simply chose to watch it because women were directing a project together and I was curious as to how it would turn out to what it was about. Talk about star power. I have come to learn about the Warriors in Pink just by watching it. I think I have heard of it before through a Gabrielle Union interview on the Mo’Nique Show, but I wasn’t compelled then to look further into it. I even have an aunt who is a breast cancer survivor and, sadly, I haven’t been moved into moving into action. I guess it was the fact that she survived that killed my inspiration/motivation. I now see I was wrong.
This film has done more for me in 2 hours than any pink shirt, ribbon or Susan G. Komen walk has ever done. Not saying anything bad about those modes of advertising… but this reached me in a medium that works with my learning style. I have come to realize how little I knew about my own breasts, how little I knew about the struggle and the process of breast cancer. I knew that men could have breast cancer, oddly enough. I knew that you needed to get checked but I thought when you get like over 50 years old. I thought that you immediately needed to have your breasts removed if you had cancer. I only thought of the women when thinking of breast cancer. This has helped to help me save my own life. * Wipes tears*.
Thank you Warriors in Pink. Thank you Jennifer Anniston, and thank you to all of the actors, writers, and directors. On behalf of all of us who thought we knew but didn’t know…..This breast is for you! *Gives self examination*
Sincerely,
~*My Mother’s Daughter*~
Related articles
- Five Premiere Screening Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore, Alicia Keys Photos + Trailer – Watch Now! (binsidetv.net)
- Jennifer Aniston and Demi Moore Bring Awareness to Breast Cancer in Lifetimes FIVE (omg.yahoo.com)
- Television Review: ‘Five,’ Directed by Jennifer Aniston and Alicia Keys – Review (tv.nytimes.com)
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