In movie weddings, there’s often a moment when someone in the wedding party gets up and gives an incredibly awkward speech, one that so brazenly flouts common sense and manners it seems like it could never happen in real life. Well, here comes Jane Fonda, proving horribly embarrassing wedding speeches really do happen! A New Yorker profile of the actress opens with a scene at her son’s 2007 wedding, at which her ex-husband, the politician and activist Tom Hayden, gave a doozy of a speech. After especially congratulating his son on marrying a black woman (It’s “another step in a long-term goal of [his]: the peaceful, nonviolent disappearance of the white race”), he turned the mike over to his ex-wife, who had just starred in Monster-in-Law, with the following intro: “Now Jane wants to say a few words. The new mother-in-law. We know how Jane always becomes the part she’s playing. Hopefully, that won’t be the case in our son’s marriage!” The crowd at least had the decency to respond to this with total silence. During her speech, Fonda talked about being a neglectful mother and then spoke about how “Native Americans had once lived where we were now and how her ancestors had sailed from Holland to New York.” Screenwriters, look no further for your next cliched set piece! [NYer]
