Lange and Shepard

He didn’t want her to work.

He cheated on her a bunch and she got tired of his shit

They both drank a lot too.

Yes, he never let up having affairs with much younger women. One of his autobiographical stories includes an epic fight (at a Mexican airport after a family vacation) in which the Jessica character tears a strip out of the Sam character over his cheating--it's a powerful portrait of relationship hell. After they split and Sam lived in Kentucky and got ALS, he wrote another story about Jessica stopping to visit him at his farm--she crawls into bed with him,to sleep not have sex.--it's a sad-sweet story of loss and uneasy reconciliation. He was a great writer, but a shitty boyfriend.

R4 Their relationship was certainly a modern day tragedy—one which Lange was eventually able to overcome and transcend.

It seems she’s back with Baryshnikov.

From Shura’s Instagram. This was taken last year during the holidays.

Mom and Dad.

He was an asshole--I don't think it surprised anyone. Overrated actor and playwright and she stuck around far too long. I doubt that she's transcended anything or even really grew-up. Most likely she was just exhausted.

Whatever you think of his plays, his prose collections are extraordinary.

Lange met her match in someone like her father, Al -- a depressive alcoholic.

"I'm going through an enormously painful time right now with Jessica & finally beginning to realize all the pain I've caused her over the years. I don't know what's wrong with me. That's the hard part. I don't know why I keep returning to these horrible bouts of drinking & bad behavior. I've ruined an amazing relationship just out of of a callous disregard for anyone else's feelings & the worst part of it is that I don't really know how it all happened. Anyhow, she has finally come to the end of her rope with me. The pathetic part is I don't know what to do now. I know that if I can't stop drinking I'm really finished." -- Sam Shepard, "Two Prospectors: The Letters of Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark"

And Shepard's own father was a horribly abusive alcoholic, and young Sam bore the brunt of his father's rage.

R6 Isn't MB married to former dancer Lisa Rhinehart? I know they built a beautiful palazzo in the DR, next door to friend Oscar De la Renta.

I always think of Joni Mitchell bragging about her 70s affair with Sam “his wife is at home and his girlfriend is in this hotel but he wants to be with me” and thinking, c’mon Joni that is a pretty pathetic brag.

Indeed, nothing to brag about.

Joni had an affair with Sam? Damn!

He dated Patti Smith for a while, who I think was a better match for him. She posts him on her Instagram from time to time.

I know this site of full of Jessica Lange loons, but you people seriously cannot be insisting she is more of a talent than him or somehow above him in that regard. He wrote some of the great post-midcentury plays, and the screenplay for Paris, Texas, which is one of my favorite films of all time. Totally heartbreaking. And honestly, he's as good of, if not a better actor than her. Lange has given the same Blanche DuBois impression her entire career. And no, before you insist I'm an M loon, I don't care for her either. Both are incredibly overpraised.

Joni's song "Coyote" is about her affair with Sam.

Lange endured Shepard’s physical and psychological abuse. Granted, she definitely fought back, as she would and should have. Nonetheless, per his own admission, he was an abusive asshole, and she put up with it valiantly because of her love for him and for the sake of their children.

As for talent, they were each equally brilliant in their own mediums. Trash talking one to uplift the other is so lowbrow.