{"id":17773,"date":"2015-01-29T10:27:38","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T18:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qgp.ykq.mybluehost.me\/cinephiled\/?p=17773"},"modified":"2015-01-29T10:27:38","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T18:27:38","slug":"interview-oscar-winner-olympia-dukakis-little-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/interview-oscar-winner-olympia-dukakis-little-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Oscar Winner Olympia Dukakis Has More Than \u2018A Little Game\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m always thrilled to see Olympia Dukakis pop up in a film, no matter how big her part is. I have been a huge fan of Dukakis\u2019s work since her Academy Award-winning performance as Cher\u2019s mother, Rose Castorini, in Norman Jewison\u2019s <\/span>Moonstruck<\/i> (1987). \u00a0Although she was already 56 years old with decades of great theater roles and a dozen movies behind her, that was a true \u201ccareer-making\u201d performance. She followed it up with a juicy performance as Clairee in the star-studded Steel Magnolias<\/em>, getting to utter such delicious lines as \u201cYou know what they say: If you don\u2019t have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me!\u201d and \u201cThe only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A-little-Game\"<\/a>I spoke to Olympia Dukakis by phone from her New York home yesterday about her latest film, A Little Game<\/i>, directed by Evan Oppenheimer. The film tells the story of a ten-year-old girl (Makenna Ballard) in Greenwich Village who gets the chance to attend a fancy private school but has trouble adjusting to her new environment. Her parents (Janeane Garofalo and Ralph Macchio) don\u2019t know what to do, but her grandmother (Dukakis) has sage advice to offer. The little girl eventually meets an irascible old chess pro (Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham) in Washington Square Park who teaches her some important coping skills while transforming her into a devoted chess enthusiast.\u00a0Ever the pro, Dukakis didn\u2019t let the flu she was battling stop her from doing interviews for this film but I didn\u2019t keep her on the phone for long.<\/p>\n

Dukakis has made a career out of playing strong ethnic women, but this was the first time I could recall her playing her own nationality, a Greek-American \u201cYaYa.\u201d I asked her if she based her character on her own Greek grandmother. \u201cYes, my grandmother was wonderful,\u201d she said. \u201cShe couldn\u2019t speak English and she was nothing but a love. She thought that everything I did was fabulous \u2014 isn\u2019t that all we need from our grandmothers? And, you know, I\u2019m a YaYa myself now so, there you go!<\/p>\n

I told Ms. Dukakis how we cheered the night she won the Oscar and took it as a good sign for her cousin, Michael Dukakis, who was in the middle of his 1988 presidential campaign. Take a look at the great closing salvo from her Oscar speech:<\/p>\n