"I feel like Alice in Wonderland, really. Everything is surreal," Farrah Fawcett says near the start of "Farrah's Story," the documentary about her struggle with cancer that aired on NBC last night. It's the sort of thing any patient must feel when facing a dreaded disease, but it also speaks to Fawcett's particular situation: A life that once looked charmed now, suddenly, feels cursed.
The anal cancer that struck Fawcett in 2006 does seem especially cruel, and this two-hour film is an unflinching look at the toll it has taken. "Farrah's Story" shows Fawcett as she's learning bad news, vomiting after an aggressive procedure, enduring excruciating pain on an operating table in Germany.
The film offers a view of cancer as a grim roller-coaster ride. Good news brings euphoria, but bad news comes again. And celebrity complicates matters in ways that are both good and bad. Being rich and famous means you can afford foreign treatment and the private plane to reach it, but it also means the paparazzi greet you and chase you when you show up at the airport.
It's ironic, in a sense, that an actress who fought the tabloids so aggressively - especially when she learned that an employee at her Los Angeles hospital had leaked her medical records to the National Enquirer - would want her pain exposed so publicly. But the bulk of Fawcett's life has been lived in public view, and largely on her own terms. Her home is filled with glamour shots from her glory days. Her friends still include her "Charlie's Angels" costars.
And she is always radiant, even at the low points - so much so that her doctors seem awed by her beauty. "Farrah probably has the most famous hair in the world," one of them says, recalling the toll of chemotherapy. "Hair was extremely important, and not in a trivial way."
Fawcett ends up taking her hair loss in stride; throughout her ordeal, she tries gamely to convey a mix of bravery and humor. Still, the treatments take their toll, and as the film ends, she's spending much of her time sedated in bed. A brief reunion with her son, who lies down beside her, is more poignant than anything the writers of "Grey's Anatomy" could come up if they tried.
Fawcett's romance with actor Ryan O'Neal, who accompanies her to treatments and cuddles with her in a hospital bed, also has a Hollywood feel; it's both ordinary and extraordinary in its depth. O'Neal may have lost his own movie-star glow, but he's replaced with a mesmerizing honesty. He's more honest to the cameras, in fact, than he is to Fawcett herself.
"To this day I don't let her see how I really feel," he tells us. " 'Cause I feel awful. I'm so scared."
