Martie Grey's film career

IDYLLOPUS : BIGSOFA : Museum : Assorted People

MARTA

URLYBIRD TIMES: Tell us about yourself, Marta.
MARTA: I'm a native Pittsburgher living, (no, better make that 'trapped') in West Virginia. An American born of Serbian parentage but in no way responsible for the crisis in the Balkans and never have I taken part in any sort of 'ethnic cleansing'. Mother of three children. College grad with degrees in communications and philosophy and religion. Work experience includes 17 years in broadcasting, medical claims adjustment, the food and beverage industry, licensed manicurist (can you dig that?), former new age shop owner and sometimes psychic consultant, PR rep for The Salvation Army (I mean can you dig THAT!) and current administrator for a local organization. I collect gargoyles, stray animals and an amusing array of books...and of course, there's all this stuff left over from my shop laying around here! I'm very much into computers, software and all that other geeky stuff....I love to cook, read and I've really been getting into gardening these past few years. Dream interp is a passion. And as a carryover from my days as a radio rocker, I do love music and have a weird collection of that as well. I think that's about it, Urlybird.
URLYBIRD TIMES: Hardly!!!

HARDLY, INDEED!!!
MARTA IS A LIVING LEGEND!

"Yes," humble Marta reluctantly admits. "It's likely you've seen my face on the big screen. My first film was THE TROUBLE WITH GARGOYLES. I played like this head nun at a nunnery and I think all the student nuns, or whatever you call them, are bad girls always making trouble behind my back, getting into all kinds of mischief like raiding the refrigerator at night when we have a hard and fast policy of no snacking after meals. If all the nuns snacked when they wanted to there'd be no food left! Anyway, it turns out it's the gargoyles! Yes, the nunnery is this really old building that has these gargoyles on it and it turns out they're alive! They teach me the meaning of fun and games and pass on to me the red slippers that belonged to the former head nun who knew all about the gargoyles too but no one else had a clue! When the tornado comes at the end of the film everybody thinks it picked up the nunnery and plopped it right down on me, but as it turns out I'm just pulling their legs cause those aren't my legs sticking out from under the nunnery at all. They're prop legs and when the student nuns try to take off my red shoes me and my gargoyles leap out and surprise them. And that way we prove that the student nuns are really heartless if they were going to take my shoes just because they thought I was dead, and we kick them out and have the nunnery all to ourselves. That's about it."

Marta in The Singing Sister Sullivan Show!

Marta's role as a nun was so successful, especially as a nun on a bike, that in her next film she was featured as a progressive motorcycle-riding nun, this time in white.

"I didn't like this ad when it first came out," Marta says. "It looked an awful lot like the ad from my other movie. But then they pointed out to me that the motorcycle was pointed left, and I could see what they meant, that the two posters had nothing in common whatsoever."

WHERE HAS OUR FAVORITE NUN BEEN THESE PAST SEVERAL YEARS
AND WHAT IS SHE UP TO NOW?

"It was rough on me at the time, but THE SINGING SULLIVAN SISTER SHOW wasn't the success that THE TROUBLE WITH GARGOYLES was. It had nothing to do with me, but after that I couldn't find a role. No one had anything for me. Then one day, out of the sky blue, I got this call from Quint Tarentino. Did I know who he was? Of course I knew who he was! Needless to say, after what his cousin, Quentin Tarentinto, had done for that Fonzie guy, and Samuel Jackson, I knew the stars were shining down on me again. He said he had just the vehicle for me. A role that would really give me an opportunity to stretch my acting muscles. I accepted without even looking at the script. Then when I saw the script, I was a little upset I was a nun again, and that I didn't even have a nice convent with gargoyles but instead I rode around in a small Ice Cream Truck. I didn't see the point. What did it mean? Turns out Quint has a beef about city sound ordinances, and he just wanted to piss some people off. He says, 'Who has the right to tell me what I can and can't listen to, and when I can listen to it!' I wanted to sue and back out of the role but my attorney advised me that I'd never be able to win. Now, I see how fortunate I was that I didnt sue. Because I wasn't happy with the script I was given, Quint rewrote it in less than a day into something truly phenomenal. The story is about a nun who had taken this vow of silence, then had this child and so the child never heard anyone speak, and she grew up and made her living selling ice cream and wasn't really a nun but was dressed like a nun because she just had her mother's hand-me-down habit to wear, and she couldn't talk but she could sing all these songs from musical comedy because those were the only records her mother listened to, and the girl found when she was out selling ice cream that she needed to be able to communicate because even if she was telepathic and could know what flavor ice cream people wanted, there were a lot of kids who couldn't read the signs to know what varieties of flavors she offered, so she made her own language out of the songs, kind of chopping up lyrics and melodies to form sentences. Then she meets a widower who has all these children who have been following her all around the neighborhood like she's the pied piper or something, and the next thing you know there are all these sound ordinances and they're fleeing over the Alps from some futuristic fascist society in the ice cream truck. The film is an underground critical success. It's too bad Quint hasn't been able to get it released in the theaters, but it's doing quite well on video. Have you seen it?"

AVAILABLE NOW, ONLY THROUGH BIGSOFA PRODUCTIONS,
IN COOPERATION WITH THE URLYBIRD TIMES,
MARTA'S NEW, CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED MUSICAL COMEDY ROMP
"THE FAMA SISTERNIS!"

To order, place $23 in cash (no stamps please) in an envelope addressed to BIGSOFA, catch the 9:45 AM Monday morning Metro Atlantean Railway Transportation Authority 123 bus at 10th and 3rd, and slip the envelope behind the third left seat from the rear. Return the following AM and you will find the video beneath the same seat. Satisfaction guaranteed, because there's something in it for everybody.

Return me to the Assorted People Museum page

NO WAIT! FOR MORE ON MARTA's CAREER AS AN ACTRESS SEE THIS ISSUE OF URLYBIRD TIMES, IN WHICH SHE IS INTERVIEWED ON HER STARRING ROLE IN DANNY BOYD'S CULT CLASSIC "STRANGEST DREAMS: INVASION OF THE SPACE PREACHERS"