I would like to add a detail that other reviewers are overlooking. It's easy to say Maggie Cogan, the protagonist, lives in a fantasy world. But what about damage she easily could have sustained while doing drugs in the 1960s and 1970s ? The narrator and Maggie mention it briefly. The filmmaker includes a black & white newsreel from 1967 that has been repeated in many documentaries on the Vietnam War and rock & roll. It's NOT the one you see about the young Maggie working as a horse & carriage driver for the Plaza Hotel in New York.
No, it's a newsreel of the first hippies in Seattle. They didn't have beads and headbands available to wear yet. You see them holding hands and cavorting in daylight in a Seattle park. A young woman's long blonde hair flies so wildly that you can't see any of her face. At any rate, the filmmaker includes this newsreel to show younger viewers that Maggie worked for the Plaza at the time of the counterculture. In the late 1960s you didn't know if someone's weird behavior resulted from drugs, love of music, anger about the Vietnam War or joy about the end of racial segregation. (You mean I can make friends with "those people ?" Wow!)
The viewer must presume that Maggie's drug use messed up her job, but of course the filmmaker can't possibly find Plaza Hotel personnel from the 1960s who would tell their side of the story. New Yorkers would find that intrusive. The point is ... would Maggie still have become homeless without drugs ?
Clearly, Maggie doesn't do drugs while she is homeless in Central Park in 1993. You can't get free samples from any New Yorkers. She is too old and physically weak for contact sport with a dealer.
So Maggie has been clean and sober for the long amount of time that she has been homeless when the movie starts in 1993. Maybe fifteen years ? But what about the damage from the 1960s and 1970s ? The odds that it was permanent are great enough that this film works as a great anti - drug movie for young people. Young people often say that a sudden fatal overdose is the only danger of using a drug. They overlook homelessness as a danger. Unless pay phones and Single Room Occupancy apartments return to Manhattan, then homelessness is as permanent as death for 99 percent of New Yorkers with issues. You are alone until you die slowly from exposure.
I recall doing a search of "maggie cogan" in the Lexis Nexis data base and finding a blurb in a New Jersey paper from about a year AFTER "Jupiter's Wife" was released. It said she had been forced to leave the apartment she shared with her beloved animals in Long Island City -- the one in which viewers of this film can see a cat riding on Maggie's vacuum cleaner while she vacuums -- and she was homeless again.
Such a tragedy couldn't have happened to a more fascinating person. She has every right to pursue her fantasies, but I am concluding that drugs made her unable to combine the fantasies with a job. If a person -- male, female, gay or straight -- cannot marry into money, then a job is necessary for survival. Like most fifty - year - old homeless people, Maggie's history is so hard to nail down completely that we don't know why her career driving horses and carriages ended.
The narrator, who depends totally on four people for information, says Maggie's best years on the job resulted in the 1967 black & white newsreel about her and the 1968 color videotape of her on "What's My Line?", but what happened in Maggie's life after that ? He says she got into drugs, left the Plaza horse job and then returned to it for a short while in the 1970s. Did her drug use mess it up the second time ?
We should tell juvenile viewers of this film that yes, drugs messed it up again and again, and they messed up everything eventually. The schedule Maggie has for fantasizing is a result of her being totally broke and unable to attract husband material. Presumably she wouldn't want to shack up with a homeless man or another man who would lie to her and hurt her. She still had a parent in 1993, but her decision to avoid the parent is understandable. Once the drugs make you a loner, then you are alone for life.
Why did Maggie move to Texas in the 1970s and then return to New York City ? It probably had to do with people she thought were friends and turned out to be anything but. Few substance abusers can avoid the harsh reality of "friends" who are actually enablers, and they disappear for whatever reasons you never find out. (Prison? Death? A new dealer?)
This film proves that every homeless person with a substance history sustained permanent damage to the brain. You can't prove that a schizophrenic who has gotten drunk or high still would have ended up schizophrenic without the sauce or the powder.
Use the film to demonstrate to young people that if you avoid drugs and binge drinking, then your chances of ever becoming homeless go way down. Look for natural highs. Notice how Maggie seems to enjoy nature ? Cannabis is just one plant. There is also the tomato plant, and the fern, and the ... What other warning can you possibly give a juvenile who watches "Jupiter's Wife ?" That you might end up fantasizing while you go to the bathroom in your pants, and nothing you do can prevent it ? That's a self - fulfilling prophecy. Pursue hugs, not drugs.
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