Even after a lot of interviews in the interim, this talk I had with Judge Reinhold back in October of 2003 is one of my all-time favorites. I expected to have a fairly light interview with Judge about the new National Lampoon film he was starring in, and we did talk about that, but he also opted to reveal a lot about the fairly dark period he went through in the 90s...and how he had come out of it. It was great to see him back working a lot then, as it is now. Although I haven't written about him since, every year I still get a Christmas card from he and his wife Amy. The guy is a class act.
You didn't have to grow up in the 80s to be a big Judge Reinhold fan, but if you went to the movies at all during that decade, you undoubtedly were. It was impossible to miss him, and also impossible not to love him, in films such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), in which he played the fast food job-challenged Brad Hamilton; or in Beverly Hills Cop 1 & II (1984 & 1987), where he was the scene-stealing young rookie cop Billy.who very much would like to be Dirty Harry but is stuck policing Rodeo Drive; or in Ruthless People (1986), as Ken Kessler, the audio-visual salesman at the end of his rope who kidnaps Bette Midler to hold her for ransom, only to find that her husband, played by Danny Devito, doesn't want her back. Some of his other prominent films from the period include Stripes (1981), Gremlins (1984), and Vice Versa (1988). Reinhold combined great comic timing with a lovable innocence, which was often a cover for the explosive temper lurking right beneath the surface of some of his characters. Directors seemed to use Reinhold as a secret weapon of sorts. While other actors often had more screen time, the best comedic scenes in those films often belonged to Reinhold and he could always be counted on to bring the entire film to a new level.
After his incredibly successful run in the 80s, Reinhold sort of disappeared from many people's radar screens during the 90s. It wasn't that he stopped working, it was just that a lot of the films he was in were fairly forgettable and didn't really get out to the public at large. To be fair, he also did some very prominent work during the 90s, such as The Santa Clause (1994) with Tim Allen, as well as his role as "Aaron the Close Talker" on a 1994 episode of "Seinfeld" which earned him an Emmy nomination. During our conversation with Reinhold, he reveals that there were other reasons for some of the project choices he made in the 90s, personal issues that go way back to some dark moments in his early childhood and which he felt compelled to confront and resolve during the past decade. Reinhold generously shares much of what he dealt with during those years in our interview below and we've printed the transcript of our talk largely unedited, as he tells his life story far better than we could. It is a story that is at time harrowing but also inspirational, because the young man who charmed us onscreen so many years ago has come out the other side of his inner journey not only whole, but perhaps as a better whole. A great deal of the story is extremely personal, but Reinhold didn't back away from it. "It's the narrative of my life and I want to 'own' it. And if somebody can benefit from hearing this story, then that would be great," he says.
The narrative begins on May 21, 1957 in Wilmington, Delaware, when Judge was born Edward Reinhold. He quickly obtained the nickname "Judge" from his father, inspired by the stern countenance he displayed at only two weeks old. "I looked a lot more like Winston Churchill than a most babies," recalls Reinhold with a laugh. His father was a successful lawyer and thought that his young child reminded him of a particularly difficult judge who he faced regularly in court. The nickname stuck. The family would move to Tidewater, Virginia, to a 500-acre estate with an Antebellum plantation house on it where Reinhold had the run of the place. These years of his life would have what Reinhold describes as a "Huckleberry Finn" element to them as. But there was also that far darker element to his childhood which Reinhold refers to as "out of a William Faulkner story." Reinhold's father would die when he was 19.
When I meet Judge Reinhold, it is in Pacific Palisades, where he and his gorgeous wife Amy have a home, although they spend most of their time in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Besides looking great, Reinhold is brimming with energy and is rightfully excited about a number of new projects that he's involved with. First, He'll be seen on TBS this month in the aforementioned National Lampoon's Thanksgiving Reunion, opposite Bryan Cranston ("Malcolm in the Middle"). Reinhold plays Dr. Mitch Snider, a straightlaced "anesthesiologist to the stars" from Los Angeles, who brings his wife Jill (Hallie Todd of "Lizzie Maguire") and kids to visit the family of his long-lost cousin Woodrow (Cranston), his wife Pauline (Penelope Ann Miller), and their children. Directed by Neal Israel, the film is a broad comedy which is unrelenting in its quest for laughs. There's a joke coming every other second and the film will have you in stitches. To rephrase a famous line from Spinal Tap, the filmmakers and cast start on 10, in terms of the level of comedy, and somehow actually manage to get to 11.
Reinhold is also developing a number of projects as a producer and has quickly put together an extremely engaging development slate. With his wife Amy, he has partnered with independent producer Eric Geadelmann to launch TLP Productions (the TLP standing for "Ten Little Piggies"). The first project Reinhold tells me about is the real-life story of Brother Bill Tomes, entitled Brother Bill, an ordinary man who received a call from God, put on monk-like robes made from everyday rags (in the tradition of Saint Francis), and entered the Chicago housing projects to attempt to keep the peace between rival gangs. Brother Bill literally walks into the line of fire regularly in his mission and although he's been fired upon dozens of times, he has emerged without a scratch. Along the way, he has helped broker peace treaties between the gangs which have saved hundreds of lives. Reinhold has recently received a draft of the script which he is very excited about from writer Angelo Pizzo (Hoosiers). With Eric Geadlemann and Reinhold's manager Gordon Gilbertson, Judge and Amy will also produce a currently untitled film based on the life of Ray Wallace, a logger from the Pacific Northwest who created the myth of Bigfoot when he carved a pair of wooden feet to create footprints of the legendary beast in the woods and managed to keep the hoax going for some 40 years. And with producer Justine Baddeley, who also was the casting director on the Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman films Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, TLP will produce One Stupid Thing, from a script by John Lavachelli. Says Reinhold of the project, which he also plans to star in, "It's a brilliantly crafted black comedy, about a family's attempt to escape the collective anxiety of an impending terrorism attack. The father takes the family from New Jersey and displaces them horribly to this little town called Nyborg, Wyoming. Then reality catches up with them. It's really about collective anxiety. He's not a hysteric. Metaphorically, it's about how displaced we all are emotionally to some place we've never been before. In a grander sense, that's what the movie's about but it's also very funny."
Had you read the magazine version of National Lampoon much while growing up?
Judge Reinhold: Oh yeah, totally. My earliest relationship with National Lampoon was a real fond one. I also went to see Animal House five or six times and knew all the lines. In a lot of ways, that movie was tremendously helpful to my career. Because I arrived in town the same year that movie opened in '78. And it created this whole new genre of youth-oriented comedies. And a few months later I was in Stripes.
We'll get back to National Lampoon's Thanksgiving Reunion in a minute, but what was that experience of working on Stripes like?
Well, I had done a couple of movies before that which were never released [chuckles]. So this was a huge movie. I remember walking out of my little telephone booth-sized honeywagon thing and watching Ivan Reitman orchestrate these tanks in Fort Knox, Kentucky, and helicopters and all these things. I was absolutely petrified because it was so big and I was so green and inexperienced and I was sure that in the few moments that I had, where this 40 million dollar bohemoth of a movie hinged on me, that I was going to blow it totally [laughs]. I don't know if I've utilized it, but I got a great lesson in audacity from Bill Murray, in terms of putting yourself out on a limb and seeing comedy as an act of audacity. That's what I saw every day in him.
Bryan Cranston from your new film is another guy who seems to subscribe to the school of comedy as an act of audacity. You and he are great together as the Snider cousins.
We had a lovely time together. We were real free with each other. Usually when somebody is that talented comically, they've got some kind of, you know [laughs] but I couldn't find it. He's just a lovely guy, easy to get along with, and totally free with himself. He gives himself such license to be completely ridiculous and sometimes way, way too big and that's okay! I don't work like that. I'm still too worried about looking too broad [laughs].
Of the many classic 80s comedies you did, do you have a favorite?
I think the first Beverly Hills Cop is my favorite. I think it's amazing how Marty Brest juggled tremendous violence and humor. Marty's really, really talented. Some of that violence was just really vicious. I mean, when you see Jimmy Russo shot at point-blank.
Tell us about playing Billy.
I loved the idea of playing a character in a movie who has a very tenuous relationship with reality and can very easily cross into [thinking] he's in a movie! That really interested me and that was my handle on him, a guy who sometimes has a problem differentiating between reality and his love for movies. And I thought, "What a cool thing to play!"
Let's talk about Fast Times At Ridgemont High. The cast is one of the great casts in film and many of them have gone on to stellar careers since then. What was the reaction career-wise for you and everyone else immediately after the film?
Well, Sean took off, as well he should have. But I had to wait another two years to do Beverly Hills Cop. It was a tough time because I expected more right away. Sean was so completely in character all the time, that I didn't really know there was such an intellectual force behind Jeff Spicollo [laughs]. So I really didn't know what to make of Sean. I thought there was a chance that he was a dumb surfer guy who didn't realize how funny he was. I thought there was a chance that he was a dumb surfer guy who didn't realize how funny he was. There was a chance that he might be incredibly brilliant. I really didn't know! [laughs]
[There is a bit of a long pause here.]
I went through this whole whirlwind of success in the 80s and had this amazing run of successful films. I guess I should just touch on what I did in the 90s, because a lot of people wonder. There was a lot of unresolved baggage that had to do with unresolved childhood stuff. My family situation was that my family was tyrannized by my father's misery. That's all I can really say. There was a lot of damage in our lives and I just never dealt with it. Some things that you need to do as a child to survive don't serve you as an adult. And in order to survive my childhood, I had to learn to fight back, to defend myself. Not physically, because all I did was - I was faster than him [laughs]. But like I said, my childhood had a very Huckleberry Finn element to it. I grew up on a beautiful Southern plantation farm in Tidewater, Virginia. There were some really great parallels between myself and Huckleberry Finn, and I stayed away a lot. I stayed out of my father's way. Anyway, my brother wasn't so lucky. I fought back. My brother didn't. He committed suicide in 1988. So enough to say, there was a lot to overcome, right? Well, I flew into this success, not dealing with any of this stuff. The fascinating thing was that I hadn't outgrown this irresistable urge to defend myself. I was still doing what I had learned to do, which served me a child. Anyway, what happened was that, sometimes authority figures and people who rubbed me the wrong way, or people who I had disputes with, I would have this irresistable urge to defend myself and I would be explosive. I could be a real pain the ass. And so I was carrying all this baggage. People would hire me because they believe in me and they wanted me to do well. And I feel like I always delivered. But I was a pain in the ass. They didn't need my problems. Anyway, the whole reason I launched into this, and I hope it doesn't sound too indulgent, is that I wanted to talk about what I did in the 90s. What I did in the 90s is I did this film, Over Her Dead Body, I moved to Santa Fe, and suddenly it's like my soul was afforded the peace to look at the wreckage of my past and say, " I've got to do something. I've got to turn around and confront what's been pursuing me." All through the 80s, everybody gave me license to escape whatever was plaguing me in any way possible, right? And I took advantage of all that. But it turns out that the only real way out of what was ailing me was through it. And what I mean by that is I confronted it all. In terms of the industry, for me, the 90s is like a lost decade in a lot of ways. It's like "What happened to him?" I stopped chasing after work. I just wanted to make a living and deal with what was most important. And it was scary. Because I didn't know whether I'd ruined my career and created a lot of damage. I would kind of venture out of obscurity, like I did "Seinfeld" in 1994. Every once in a while I'd emerge and then go back into whatever I was dealing with. You know, I don't regret it. I had to do it. People make jokes about therapists. These were extremely compassionate, beautiful people that taught me how to slowly step out of my own turmoil and to be able to view my life with compassion, rather than self-hatred. Because I felt like damaged goods for a long time. I believe that redemption is a very real thing. It's not a third act Hollywood gimmick. And true redemption, the real deal, that's where the rubber meet the road. That's where you turn around and face your life. I was forced to face it, because it damn near killed me. I don't want to go into beyond that, but this unresolved childhood stuff almost led to my death a couple of times. So I didn't have a choice. I had burned a lot of bridges. I pissed a lot of people off. So I didn't have a choice. I think everybody has some area in their life that's broken. I think maybe that's part of the life experience. We're given these broken parts in order to have the opportunity to deepen. I came out on the other side. How did I do that? I went from rage to peace through compassion and learning the power of forgiveness. You have to practice forgiveness. I think in my own life and in a lot of lives, the hardest process of forgiveness is towards yourself, because some of your greatest wounds are self-inflicted because of things that happened to you. So the hardest person for me to forgive with myself. But when I looked at my life with compassion, I realized it was easier to forgive myself than I ever imagined. I never knew that I could get to the other side of anything from this kind of trouble. So I was very troubled and thank God that redemption is a very real thing. So in the 90s, I didn't chase after work. I worked to support myself. I worked for travel. Sometimes I really wasn't that concerned with the content of what I did. I refer to this amongst friends, and I don't mind saying it, as my "Underground Film Period." And that doesn't necessarily mean films that were avante-garde, but instead they were films that should have been buried [laughs]. But this was a time of tremendous value and redemption for me. Santa Fe was a time of reckoning for me.
And did you marry Amy during this period?
No, and this was the beautiful thing, is that I didn't get married until I was ready. And I don't think it's any accident. About five years ago, I really feel like I came out the other side. I have to say that I believe in grace. I don't mean to sound like somebody on TV, but I believe in God's grace. I believe that I've been healed. Anyway, my point is that if I had met my wife before all that, I would have wrecked it. Because I've put a lot of people through hell. My first marriage, my wife really loved me, and I was like that Groucho Marx line "I couldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member," right? Let me put it this way, the best definition of redemption that I've heard is that you're placed in the same situation but you do something different. Then you know something's really changed. Otherwise, it's just talk. And that started happening without any effort. It was easier to me to extend grace and compassion to other people because I had learned how to have it for myself. I wasn't carrying it around anymore. And then a year later, I met my wife. And my wife is so beautiful, both physically and in her character. She has such great, deep, true character. Her gentleness has been one of my greatest teachers.
You're obviously pursuing work again now and getting lots of it. Plus you're producing some great projects.
The material is just great. And what's awesome is that this stuff seems to be finding me now. And here I am trying to incorporate this whole journey [of my life]. It's given me so much more depth and possibilities creatively. I don't know what's going to happen. I know I have a great passion for these properties. They're really great stories. And what's cool is because these projects are taking off, it really makes me feel less dependent, you know what I mean? Most importantly, this type of material, especially One Stupid Thing, this is the type of material I should have always been going after. But I was too wrapped up in myself to be able to lend myself to it. But I feel like I'm ready to do this kind of work now.
We did this interview with Julie a few years back, when she was between "Angel" and "Dexter," the series which has really been her breakout hit.
Julie Benz: Far from a "Long Shot" by Terry Keefe
Resilience. It's a word that seems to go hand-in hand with some of the best performances of actress Julie Benz, whether she's playing the seemingly indestructible vampire Darla on "Angel," or Annie Garrett, the competitive horse rider who beats every conceivable obstacle in Benz' new Hallmark Channel movie "The Long Shot: Believe in Courage." But although the two aforementioned characters might both have the proverbial steel spine, their hearts couldn't be more different. While Darla the vampire did acquit herself somewhat during the course of her most recent death on "Angel," when she sacrificed her own life after giving birth to the child she conceived with Angel (David Boreanaz) in the acclaimed episode "Lullaby," she has largely played the villain for most of the series. Benz’ new character Annie Garrett, on the other hand, has nothing but love for the world, even when life has dealt her some pretty lousy cards. Based on the true story of equestrian Amy A. Gaston, “The Long Shot” is a charming story of hope and redemption, which also allows Benz to showcase a very different on-screen persona from the one her fans may have become accustomed to on “Angel.”
When we first meet Annie Garrett in “The Long Shot,” she and her 7-year old daughter Taylor (Gage Golightly) have just been left abandoned and penniless by Annie's fiery-tempered, irresponsible husband Ross (John Livingston) in a new town where he was supposed to have a job waiting for him at a local farm. Annie also has the added responsibility of caring for her horse Tolo, who was supposed to be stabled at Ross' new job and now has nowhere to live. Fortunately, Annie is what is known as a "horse whisperer," blessed with an uncanny ability to deal with horses, who seem to love her one and all. On the eve of being evicted from a local roach motel, she finds a friendly face in Mary Lou O'Brian (four-time Academy Award nominee Marsha Mason), a legendary horse riding champion who also owns and runs the local equestrian center Shamrock Farms with the help of barn manager Guido Levits (two-time Golden Globe winner Paul Le Mat). While working at Shamrock, Annie slowly rebuilds her life and begins training in the competitive riding sport of dressage. But in a double whammy of bad luck, she's injured in a fall from a barn, and Tolo is stricken blind. Faced with increasing debts which would be greatly helped by some prize money, Annie makes the decision to take the blind Tolo into the dressage championships.
After a long string of sci-fi and supernatural roles which have been heavy on the FX and pyrotechnics, "The Long Shot" provides Benz with a simple but charming story, grounded in reality, which gives her a great framework to develop an in-depth portrait of Annie, a character who has an inner strength which is near supernatural itself. Benz creates an Annie who radiates such a warmth and goodness that you want to help her with her troubles, even through the television. And consequently, it’s not surprising when the on-screen characters, not to mention horses, fall in love with Annie immediately.
Pittsburgh-native Julie Benz herself knows more than a little about what willpower it takes to keep your dreams alive, as she's had to test exactly how deep her own wells of strength go from the age of 3, when she started competing as a figure skater. By the age of 13, she was nationally ranked but that same year suffered some debilitating injuries. Although she would eventually skate again, the downtime afforded Benz the chance to try out a new passion, that of acting. She went on to study at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and gained her first real notoriety playing Darla, the “Angel” character who originally appeared (and was killed for the first time) on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Darla is a 400-year old vampire who has had an on-again, off-again relationship with Angel for around 150 of those years. Darla was thought dead until she was brought back as a surprise on the last episode of the first season of "Angel." The series is now in its fifth and final year, despite rabid fan demands to keep the series alive, the likes of which have not been seen since the end of the first "Star Trek." And with the story arc of "Angel" coming to a close, it seems likely that we may see Darla again one last time this year. Other notable roles for Benz include Jawbreaker [1999], a memorable stint on the series "Roswell," The Brothers [2001], and the mini-series "Taken." She is currently shooting “Lakawanna Blues” for HBO, alongside a cast which includes Halle Berry, S. Epatha Merkerson, and Liev Schreiber. Venice met her at local coffee shop Abbott’s Habit in late March.
Tell us about meeting Amy A. Gaston, the real life equestrian who the Annie Garrett character is based on.
Julie Benz: I got to spend two weeks rehearsal with her, prior to the shooting of the movie. She's actually the one who trained me for the horseback riding. I describe Amy as being the type of person, that when she looks at you and smiles, you feel like you're getting a big hug from her. Amazing and effervescent. She has wonderful warmth and heart. She's a modern-day Pollyanna in that she sees the silver lining in every dark cloud and can take any bad situation and find the positive in it. We spent a lot of time together and went through a lot, actually. I was thrown off a horse during the rehearsal process. Going through that with her made me realize that she's not jaded at all. She doesn't have a bad word to say about anybody. And you don't really get to meet those kinds of people here in Hollywood. For me, the performance was about really trying to capture that sweetness and that real innocent, loving nature that she has.
Did Amy really have a lot of those "horse whispering" abilities?
Amy can whisper to anything, I think, any animal, even people. She just has a way about her, but animals especially respond to her. It's so great to see. I mean, the horses at the stable we were training at - she'd just be standing there and a horse would stick its neck out of a stall and try to nuzzle her head [laughs].
You mentioned that you were thrown badly from a horse during rehearsal.
They say you're not a real horsewoman until you've been thrown off a horse. So I guess I'm a real horsewoman now. [laughs] It was pretty scary. You don't realize at first that you're dealing with a 1200-pound beast really. I mean, horses are amazing creatures and they're really just unique personalities and very special. But they're extremely powerful. And this was a horse they were trying out to be my horse in the movie. He obviously didn't make the cut. [laughs] Throwing an actress is not the way to her heart. I've never had such a volatile co-star in my life [laughs]. It was pretty eye-opening I'd have to say. I was in a lot of pain throughout most of the filming of the movie with my back, but it gave me a tremendous amount of respect for the animal as well. When you're sitting on a horse, you have to be aware 150 percent. You can't joke around and not be listening to everything the horse is telling you at all times. I think the throw gave me that respect.
Had you done much riding before playing Annie?
Not really. I had done some basic western riding, but never dressage. I didn't even know what dressage was. When they told me the story was about horseback riding set in the world of dressage, I was like, "What?" Basic western riding is completely different. In dressage, it's all about the respect with the horse. It's all about you and the horse working together. Even when putting on the saddle, you do it in such a way that doesn't startle the horse. It's a working-together relationship. And there are so many rules [laughs]. It was overwhelming at first. Like you can only get on and off a horse on one side. And you can only get off and on a certain way.
How was working with Marsha Mason?
When they first offered me the movie, they told me it was a movie with Marsha Mason and I was so excited. I'm such a huge fan of hers. The Goodbye Girl is an all-time favorite of mine. She's wonderful to work with. She has this really amazing inner strength on the set. Sometimes if there's a lot of stuff going on on-set, it can get really overwhelming, and I can get overwhelmed as an actor. But then I would look at her, and she's so centered and so strong and able to deal with the chaos. I strive to be that way myself.
How many times have you died as the character Darla over the course of "Buffy" and "Angel?"
I think I've died four or five times. I honestly believe that they like seeing me covered in blood [laughs]. I just think they have a thing with me and blood. I've died a lot!
Each time you've died in the two series, did you think you were coming back in the future or did you think, "This is it for Darla"?
You know, I'm very shortsighted. Every time I died, they would give me this big party on the set because I honestly thought it was my last time. I would sob and hug everybody goodbye and say, "It's over!" [laughs] And then a couple of months later, I'd get a phone call to come back. Everybody's now gotten pretty jaded about me dying on the show. I don't get the big party anymore. I don't get the gifts anymore. It's like, "Yeah, we'll see you in a few months." [laughs]
Tell us about working on Jawbreaker.
It was a lot of fun. I really felt like I reverted back to high school when I was filming that movie. I'd come home and I'd be like [“Valley Girl” voice] "Omigod, you're never going to believe this!" [laughs] We shot it very fast and it was grueling but I think I really became a 15-year old again when filming it. That's one of the perks of being an actor. Characters will take over your life for a short time and you can act out, but blame it on the role [laughs]. And I was not that popular in high school so it was great for me to play the cool girl!
I can't believe you were not that popular in high school. C'mon, Julie!
I was busy! I was really busy with my figure skating and acting, so I wasn't really around much. That makes sense. You were figure skating from the age of 3.
I always joke around that my parents were suckers because at 3, they were told I was talented. I don't think you really are at 3! [laughs] We started it as a family activity to do on the weekends, as a way to spend time together as a family. And it just grew from there. My brother and sister did it too. We all started at the same time. My brother and sister were Junior National Champions. They were ranked 10th in the world when they retired. I retired before they did. And I was ranked 13th in the country at that time. They always felt like I’d be the one to go the furthest, but I suffered two really bad injuries at 13 and then discovered acting at that point. Was it devastating for those injuries to happen at 13?
You know, I had to be off the ice for 6 months and I had to be in a cast. But at the same time, I got to have a life. I got to be social. I did go back and skate a couple of more years. But at that point, I had already started acting and doing local theater in the Pittsburgh area where I grew up. I was doing commercials and had met my manager, Vincent Cirrincione, who is also my manager today. I think having met him really made me feel like "I can do this for a living. I can move out of skating and into acting and it can work."
Did you find that having lived through the adversity of being a competitive skater at a young age steeled you for the ups and downs of Hollywood?
I think the most important thing I learned as a competitive ice skater was that there really is no such thing as an overnight success. That it takes years of training and hard work and perseverance. For every overnight success, there is a good 10 years of experience behind that person. They just happened to pop at that time. I trained 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, 2 weeks off a year, from the age of 3 to skate. So it's almost the same with acting. You could go on a reality show and be famous overnight for your 15 minutes, but if you really want to be in it for the long haul, you have to work at it.
We did this interview with director Susan Stroman three years ago, as The Producers was getting ready to be released theatrically. We've also interviewed Susan, along with Mel Brooks, about the stage version of "The Producers," and will be posting that interview shortly. REIMAGINING BIALYSTOCK AND BLOOM FOR HOLLYWOOD:
Susan Stroman talks The Producers
by Terry Keefe
It was a filmmaking challenge of challenges. Susan Stroman had already done the near impossible when she directed and choreographed the Broadway musical version of Mel Brook's 1968 comedy classic The Producers, turning it into an ongoing smash which won a record 12 Tony Awards in 2001, including Best Direction and Best Choreography. But Stroman was now charged with bringing The Producers back to film, this time as an adaptation of the Broadway musical. The term full circle was invented for scenarios such as this one. So was the term obstacle course. In bringing the story back to film, the imposing shadow of the 1968 version would loom even taller than it did on Broadway. It was one thing to reinvent a movie classic for the stage, which is viewed as a different medium, but a film of the same would be judged by even tougher standards. For one, the archetypes of Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock and Gene Wilder as Leo Bloom offer some pretty big shoes to fill. As does the legendary Brooks himself, despite the fact that he and Thomas Meehan wrote the screenplay for the film together, adapted from their Broadway book. At the same time, some of the elements which made the Broadway show such a success could easily have proven the undoing of a film attempt. The stage version of The Producers is a wonderful stew of musical comedy, satire, and spoof. In the same show that has the fairly traditional Broadway love song "That Face," there are also visual gags such as a future Bialystock-Bloom production entitled "She Schtups to Conquer." Without a very steady hand, the tone, something which a film audience will rarely forgive you for being uneven on, could be a very rocky road, rather than the straight line needed.
We'll beat around the bush no longer. Stroman has succeeded with flying colors in what amounts to a reimagining of the traditional musical comedy for the modern age. The Producers draws heavy inspiration from the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals in terms of its general staging, set design, and atmosphere: there are unabashedly big dance numbers such as that of Broderick and an actual chorus line of dancing girls for "I Want to be a Producer;" the New York and Broadway depicted here are the ones of old school musical fantasy: cleaner, brighter, and more joyful than the real-life versions ever were; and the office of Max Bialystock is a constant screwball comedy revolving door of characters running in and out at the least opportune moments for them and the most opportune for laughs. But simultaneously, the more ribald elements of Brooksian humor are seemlessly worked into the proceedings. That chorus line behind Nathan Lane's Max Bialystock is one composed of sex-crazed little old ladies on walkers, who want a piece of the money-starved producer in exchange for the "chequees" which fund his productions. Part of this definitely isn't your grandfather's movie musical, but part of it is. And therein lies the achievement. The script by Brooks and Meehan is particularly sharp and tight, with excellent transitions, both visual and verbal, which provide a strong spine for the film.
Reprising their Broadway roles are Lane as Bialystock, Matthew Broderick as Leo Bloom, Gary Beach as flamboyant gay director Roger de Bris, and Roger Bart as his assistant, Carmen Ghia. Uma Thurman as Swedish secretary/love interest Ulla and Will Ferrell as Franz Liebkind round out the principals. Lane, in particular, has the most difficult of roles and really makes it his own here. It might be sacrilege to some to say this, but his Bialystock is on par with that of Mostel's. He adds a level of sympathetic loveableness to Bialystock, along with a undercurrent of perpetual frustration which explodes in moments of Ralph Kramden-like comedic anger.
With making this new film of The Producers, you had the challenge of taking the successful Broadway musical adaptation that you had already done of the 1968 film and then bringing it back to film. Were you able to fine the right tone quickly?
Susan Stroman: When we started this, it really was to do the Broadway musical, and not so much to call back to the original film. Because the musical is a completely different genre and takes on a completely different form. So I was actually trying to be true to the Broadway musical. But actually, also, make it easy for the camera and accessible for a moviegoing audience. So it was trying to take this Broadway musical and really giving it four walls and a sky [laughs]. It was great that we were able to build the sets down at Steiner Studios. It was like the old MGM days. I had 5 sound stages. [The set for] 44th Street was built there so it was completely controllable. We were able to have playback of an orchestra of 72 pieces. So I was really feeling like a Gene Kelly running around these different sound stages. But ultimately, finding the style was easy because the film ultimately had to pay homage to films like Singin' in the Rain and Bandwagon. In that it had to be believable when someone launched into song and dance, and it had to be believable on film. And the thing is that The Producers is a musical comedy. We're not sexy and edgy like Chicago. There's no hiding it, we're definitely a musical comedy. And in fact we're a comedy musical, really. So we had to make sure that the comedy reigned supreme all the time. That it reigned supreme in the musical numbers, in the lyrics, in the staging of the scenes, and making sure that the camera was there for the comedy. But for me, it was fantastic, because it was revisiting and reinventing how to stage this musical. The camera almost became like a dancer to me. In the sense that it would partner with the actors. If a dance step took an actor 8 counts to the left, the camera had to make sure it was in the exact 8 counts and moved with them. And the whole crew ended up loving moving to the music. They had to shoot to the music and move the camera forward and backward, and left and right, according to the music. And they ultimately loved doing that. As a matter of fact, in the last days, when I was just shooting some signs, the fellows would ask me to put some music on [laughs]. Everyone got hooked and I loved that. You know, I really got into the theater because of movie musicals. From watching Fred and Ginger on television, and watching Royal Wedding or Easter Parade on television. So now, to having been able to choreograph and direct a gorilla of a musical, it's really beyond dreams realized because that's how I became who I am when I was a little girl. And I think that was probably quite true for everyone on the New York team that I worked with. Certainly all the creators, but even the crew. They thought perhaps that this was something they never had the opportunity to do. We all thought it was gone. And here we were doing this giant musical. So it was quite a joyous experience.
Something that struck me is that none of the recent crop of successful movie musicals have really gone for the traditional movie musical dance numbers that The Producers is filled with. This is the first of the new generation of movie musicals that really harkens back to some of the golden musicals you spoke about as inspiration.
Yes, and I think it has to do with the comedy too. Because I think that sometimes you have to put the camera squarely on something in order for it to be funny. Squarely on its character, or dance number, for it to be funny. I wouldn't shoot another movie like this, because you would want to be at different raking angles and underneath the dancers and such, but for this, the comedy really had to be straight-on. And that does call back to the old way of shooting.
There's nowhere to hide either in terms of disguising things with flashy cuts and angles. It's more of a challenge as a filmmaker.
That's a very good point. Because here I am doing a shot that had 20 dancing girls in it. And each girl had to be exactly the same. If one girl's hand went up late, I had to cut and reshoot again. In the theater, you can get away with someone not being totally precise, but you can't get away with it on film. And it was very important for me to be able to let the shots go on a little longer than maybe a more contemporary filmmaker would have.
I really enjoyed the lengths of some of your takes. Particularly in the "Betrayed" number that Nathan does. You cut to a few different angles, but you don't spruce it up with much other than the power of his performance. He is the special effects.
I'm very lucky that I have Nathan and Matthew, too, in that regard. Because not only do they know how to play to an audience of 1500, but they also know how to play a camera of one. They were able to use this technique. And, of course, their comic timing is fantastic. It was a wondeful love affair with the camera and those two comics. I found myself even in the editing, I have a wonderful editor named Steven Weisberg, that we would find ourselves editing to their eyebrows. When their eyebrows would go completely straight up in the air, we knew that it was time to go [laughs].
It's also unusual to see the stars doing some fairly elaborate dance routines. You saw a bit of it in Chicago, but not to the extent here. I was thinking of the sweet, old Hollywood-style dance number between Matthew and Uma during their courtship. Matthew had obviously been doing this on stage for awhile, but was Uma able to pick it up right away?
Absolutely. I was very lucky in that both Uma and Will Ferrell had the chops to do this. Uma, because she had done the Kill Bill films, actually knew how to learn and rehearse. A lot of movie stars aren't used to rehearsing. They just come in and do their thing. But for this project, Will and Uma had to have seven weeks of rehearsal. She knew how to learn. She knew that this is what she had to do to get through this song and dance number. So she and Will both went into heavy vocal and dance rehearsals. And they both have what I think makes a great musical comedy performer, that fearless quality. When I would look in their eyes, they would have delight about the idea of sliding across a desk or flipping over a couch or being thrown across a chair. There was never panic. They loved the challenge of the movement and they loved the challenge of singing and dancing. And Will was so wonderful with those darn pigeons [laughs]. [Note: The introductory scene of Will Ferrell's Nazi character has him tending pigeons on his rooftop which have the ability to do a "Sieg Heil!" salute.] He even seemed excited about conquering the pigeons. They both had the right personality and right demeanor, and they were excited to go on this roller coaster ride.
As Matthew and Nathan and Gary and Roger had been doing this on stage for so long, what was their rehearsal period like?
They did have a rehearsal period, because the choreography did change, as the sets changed. For example, on Broadway Matthew danced with six girls with pearls, but in the movie he has 20 girls with pearls. So they all had new choreography. On Broadway, Nathan dances with 20 little old ladies, but here, in Central Park, he dances with 100. And my stage was Central Park, which is the most wonderful theater set of all. So they needed rehearsal so that, when the time came to shoot, they would be comfortable on these giant sets and with this expanded scale.
Was there a learning curve for them in terms of how to play the gags for the film, which they might play differently when they're on stage and trying to hit the back row?
They adjusted. They brought it down for the camera. And they did that naturally, I have to say. Because what Nathan and Matthew and Gary and Roger all have is a unique ability to feel an audience. They know when an audience is laughing hysterically and when to go and when to stay. Unbelievable comic timing. But here, they just have the camera, which is more of a silent audience, and they acted accordingly to that.
What was the most painful cut or change that you had to make from the original Broadway book? "King of Old Broadway" was a number that has been omitted from the film.
Yes, and that was absolutely the most painful. It's on the DVD [laughs], so that's good. But I'll tell you why that was cut. In the theater, the audience watches everything in a wide shot. But in a film, of course, I have the close-up and that brings you information immediately. So when I did "King of Old Broadway" and then did that first office scene, I was repeating a little bit. I was getting the same information from Max Bialystock twice. You don't see that in the theater, but you absolutely see it when the camera is close-up. So I just made a decision that it was better to get on with it and get into our story. It was indeed painful though.
Did development on the film commence quickly after the Broadway show was clearly a success or did it require some musical films such as Chicago to hit before the studio pulled the trigger?
We were actually recording the album of the Broadway show and I was in a lounge with Nathan, Matthew and Mel Brooks. And Mel just jumped to his feet and said, "We're making the Broadway musical into a movie, and [pointed to me] you're gonna direct it [and pointed to Matthew and Nathan] and you're gonna star in it!" He was like Max Bialystock at that moment, with his wonderful line, "Worlds are turned on such thoughts." [laughs]. That was the moment and it was shortly after that when things started to fall into place with meetings and things. I think that the heart and soul of Mel as a filmmaker was coming out then. Because he was seeing these incredible performances; he was seeing his music and lyrics being loved by an audience; and he wanted to preserve it. I think he just thought that he had to produce a movie, and he wanted to get it on film. And he was my impresario on this. He had his producer's hat on it.
What was his role on the set once the script was done and shooting commenced?
He would come in periodically. He wasn't there all the time. He would come in and say to me, "Susan, you can have whatever you want. Just don't spend a penny." [laughs]. So he was my real producer on this and he was wonderful. He's a dear buddy. Because although Universal and Sony distributed, the film is really produced by the Brooksfilm Company.
So you were kind of given leeway from the studios in terms of creative freedom then?
Yes, I had two sneak previews with my director's cut. Sony and Universal both came. And they heard the applause and the laughing. When the lights came up, they just looked at me and said, "Do whatever you want." [laughs] They were so pleased and, I have to say, always supportive. I know that I was doing something that was unique to what they're used to. Getting people to sing and dance is what I do for a living, so I think that they respected that. And they were wonderful all the way through.
What was Mel's reaction to the film after he saw it for the first time?
I think that was my greatest moment. Because he hadn't seen any part in the putting together of things, and he was seeing it for the first time. He turned to me and said, "You did it" and gave me a big hug. I think it was my best moment of all during this whole process. Because he is one of those men who will throw you into the deep end of the pool and tell you to swim [laughs].
Are you working on any theatrical features next?
I hope so. I think I'm going to be a little like Max Bialystock and take a trip to Rio after this opens and take a little break [laughs]. But after that, I think I'd love to put another theater piece on film.
THEN AND NOW: The comparison between these two photos should give awkward teenagers everywhere hope.
This interview with Anthony Michael Hall, or "Mike" as he calls himself, was conducted in the summer of 2003, while he was shooting the television series of "The Dead Zone."
by Terry Keefe
Shaking hands with Anthony Michael Hall these days might be a little disconcerting for you if you've been following his USA Network series "The Dead Zone," based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. It's often a handshake with a person that triggers the visions of Hall's character Johnny Smith, a survivor of a near-fatal car accident who has been blessed, or perhaps cursed, with psychic powers that enable him to see parts of a person's future, as well as their past. The operative word here is "parts," and the visions are not always what they appear to be, more like jigsaw puzzle pieces that Johnny has to decide exactly what to do with. Since the series debuted last June with the highest ratings for a dramatic series in the history of basic cable, Hall's Johnny Smith has strode through a psychic landscape which has found him chasing serial killers and kidnappers, flashing back to the 40s to help a war veteran find his lost true love, and trying to make sense of a horrifying vision of Washington, D.C. in apocalyptic flames. Hall's performance operates on many levels and is truly the glue holding all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. He must sometimes play Johnny as reactive to the overwhelming visions that he's experiencing, but he also must keep Johnny interesting as he interprets those visions, a difficult dichotomy for an actor which Hall more than succeeds at. Part detective story, part religious parable, part hero's journey, and part thriller, "The Dead Zone" ranks amongst the most unique and entertaining television on the air today, and it's a terrific showcase for the talents of Hall who, like the character he plays, has been on a interesting journey for some time now.
You, of course, remember him from the trilogy of John Hughes high school classics from the 80s - Sixteen Candles [1984], The Breakfast Club [1985], and Weird Science [1985] - where Hall played different variations on the same geeky nerd and quickly became a household name. There are many films from that period which do not hold up very well anymore, particularly the teen-themed ones, but all three pictures that Hall did for Hughes are comedy classics. After Hall moved on to older and more leading-man type roles, Hughes cast other actors to fill Hall's shoes in some of his subsequent high school films, but the magic was never the same without Anthony Michael Hall playing the lovable and hilarious nerd. Of course, typecasting is an evil force in Hollywood and most of the other teen stars from that period have had a rough road. It seems enough to just survive teen stardom with an adult career intact, but Hall has done more than just survive. He's thrived. However, a look through his filmography reveals that it's been a long road from the gangly Geek to the smoldering psychic Johnny Smith.
His first steps away from the nerd persona would be in the film Out of Bounds in 1986 where he played a farm boy named Daryl who gets mixed up with a bad element in Los Angeles. Then he would take on the role of a high school football star in Johnny Be Good in 1988, followed by his turn as the muscular, violent bully Jim in Edward Scissorhands [1990]. But it was in Six Degrees of Separation in 1993 when he was really able to display the depth of his acting chops again. As Trey, the young gay man who gives Will Smith's character all the information he needs to infiltrate Manhattan high society, Hall was creepy, conniving, sympathetic, and altogether riveting. In short, the performance gave notice that he was truly around for the long haul as an actor. By 1999, he would do his best work yet as Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates who manipulated and charmed his way around Noah Wyle's Steve Jobs in the Emmy-nominated Pirates of Silicon Valley. More great work followed in 61*, directed by Billy Crystal, where Hall played another real-life legend, left-handed pitcher Whitey Ford.
Venice spoke with Anthony Michael Hall from the set of the "The Dead Zone" in Vancouver where he was shooting 6 new episodes which will begin airing on Sunday, July 6th. During the course of our conversation, Hall will bring up the phrase "body of work" often. It's safe to say he's building a very impressive one.
Your role as Johnny Smith in "The Dead Zone" requires that you not only play Johnny but also that you sort of travel through time in his psychic visions, sometimes even playing other characters within those visions. It's a challenging part. Is there any particular aspect of the role that you've found the most challenging?
Anthony Michael Hall: Probably just making very unreal circumstances plausible and real for an audience. I think that more than any other role in my career I feel like a storyteller, I guess sort of like a writer would. It's interesting because the show sort of unfolds on two levels. There's the storytelling aspects which are linear and then once I sort of go into the vision mode, then the audience really travels with me into these vision flashes. More than any other character (that I've played) I try to give a mind, body, and spirit to the character. It has to have been my most challenging role to date. The idea of exploring a character who is an empath, who is somehow drawn to helping people, is very challenging. To not make it any type of cliche or becoming cheesy in any way, to make it real. It's also been a challenge to keep a bright side to the character, to inject some humor into the role.
What's in store for Johnny in the new group of episodes that you're shooting now?
I think the slant for this season, Season 2.5 we're calling it because technically it's still Season 2, is that the network wanted more sort of action-adventure shows. So the first one coming out of the box is kind of like Twister in a way. Not to be too heavy-handed in the references, but I'm chasing a storm, this tornado. Then we did one which is sort of inspired by the SARS epidemic. It's similar to "Law & Order" in a way, in that it's ripped from the headlines. We're not calling the epidemic SARS, but this mysterious flu virus has potentially hit my son's school. That's a real intense episode. Then there are four others that we've completed. They're kind of all over the map, but I think the scripts are really good and that the network did the right thing in the theme of the shows, in trying to keep the same audience but bring a new audience in as well.
Is there any particular reason that you think the show was so popular from the moment it hit the air?
That's a good question. I think now more than ever there's a generally greater interest in things that relate to the paranormal. Whether you go back to the success of "The X Files" or not, I think that all things supernatural really strike a chord with people, because I think now more than ever the news is very depressing. Post-Iraq, just sort of the global temperature. For that reason, the tone and the feel of the show appeals to people. And also I think the writing is excellent and we have a great ensemble.
How has the series changed the types of roles that you're being offered in Hollywood?
There are more things coming in now but I've been so tied up with the show that it's difficult to say. But just in general, I think it's a wonderful watershed role for me because of the fact that the things I did in the 80s attached me to the whole John Hughes thing. And I've had a lot of great roles in my so-called adult life, as Bill Gates in Pirates of Silicon Valley and Whitey Ford in 61*, but with this it's a breakthrough in that hopefully it'll transition me into the next half of my life as an actor in the industry.
What type of research did you do to craft your performance as Bill Gates?
I just read everything I could. There were 3 or 4 biographies that I could get my hands on and used as reference material. I also read a lot of business books on Microsoft, on the computer industry itself. I also had an acting coach, Steve Bridgewater. He was excellent and when I worked with him for about 5 or 6 weeks prior to the start of the show, we broke it down - some days we'd isolate Gates' body, other days we'd work on his voicing. I kind of approached it from all angles, playing Gates. Ultimately what happened is that I think it was the first method performance that I've given, in that after awhile I found myself doing things that were very "Gates-ian." Competitive things like getting to the set two hours before the other actors. That was a breakthrough role for me, just in terms of my preparation. It was an honor to play the richest man in the world, but I had to really get under his skin to find out what motivated him and what his backstory was.
Tell us about the experience of playing Whitey Ford in 61*.
Billy Crystal was just great to work with. He's like an almanac when it comes to Yankee baseball. What Jack Nicholson is to the Lakers, Billy is to the Yankees. We all just knew that it was such a labor of love for Billy. After awhile, it was like Billy became Joe Torre in a way and we became a team. We spent the whole summer traveling together. It was just the highlight of my life. Not just working with Billy, but also the guys who were hired to play the rest of the team. A lot of them were actually minor league baseball players or college baseball players. I also got to meet Whitey Ford. After the premiere, HBO threw a party at one of the armories. I was standing there talking to my mother and a friend, and Whitey Ford walked over to me. He goes, "Great job. But I threw with my left and I drank with my right!" [laughs] We were drinking in the film and I must've had my drink in my left hand, so he had to correct me afterwards.
When you look through your filmography, Six Degrees of Separation really feels like the point when you crossed over from one type of films to another.
That's cool with me. I think it's about the range of work, you know? I think the great actors - whether its going back to Olivier, or in modern day, Hopkins or De Niro - people that I admire, I look up to, it's about the body of work certainly. And I've always wanted to show that diversity. I think with that, playing a gay man was really a challenge for me, being a straight guy and playing a gay man who also functioned as a sort of Svengali to Will Smith's character.
Around the time of Six Degrees of Separation you started taking a lot of off-beat character type roles that really allowed you to stretch as an actor, and I think you earned a great deal of respect as an actor as well during that period. Was it a conscious decision to take the types of roles you did?
I'd like to say that it was all conscious, that would relate to having been offered everything. But the reality is that I had to hustle and go for those parts. But I think that cultivated in me a greater desire to maintain a greater career and a face in the industry. And for my work to grow in that respect. So I think that whereas I started off with some very off-the-cuff performances as a teenager in those John Hughes films, I've certainly learned the craft over the last 15-20 years and I've worked with a number of good coaches. It's just about getting better with the work.
What was your experience like as the youngest cast member ever on "Saturday Night Live" in the mid-80s?
[laughs] Forgettable. As I'm sure you've heard and read, it was a very, very competitive environment. In some ways very cutthroat. As many people will tell you about Lorne Michaels , he's a brilliant guy, but there's this sense of always trying to please Lorne because he's the creator of this show that became this phenomenon. It's competitive because you never know what the writers are thinking because they're all sort of vying to be in the cast, and the cast is looking for the help of the writers, and you just sort of have to fend for yourself. I think the people that found the most success came from a stand-up background where they had their own material and they had that competitive nature. Not to say that I'm not competitive, but I think comedians are far more competitive than actors are with each other. It's a different vibe - it's sort of a hybrid of everything - rock and roll, theater, everything rolled into one. But here's the dichotomy - the doing of the show, as was described to me by Dan Aykroyd, he said that it's going to be unbelievable when you get up there and see those three cameras beaming into your head and know that there's 350 people in the audience but you're going out to millions of people. So the dichotomy lies in the fact that despite the frustrations of the 6-day preparation and the around-the-clock rehearsing and all that, just the doing of the show is amazing. That hour and a half when you're going out live to the world. And also, I have to admit, the parties afterwards were unbelievable [laughs]. You know, I'm 17 or 18 years old and we did the show and okay, Madonna's the guest host. You look up into the crowd and there would be Sean Penn. And then at the post-parties at the Rainbow Room, I get there and I look to my right and there's Andy Warhol with Jean Michel Basquiat and I look to my left, and there's David Bowie. It was just surreal.
Of the John Hughes movies you did, which was the most fun to work on?
Well, The Breakfast Club was certainly the most prominent of the films but it was actually the two that bookended it that I had the most fun on - Sixteen Candles and Weird Science. One of the things that John was most gifted at, which is often overlooked, is that he just enabled people. With me, he was always liberating me to try something different and to go for this or that. Even if I had an idea to change a line or to come up with something. For example, the scene in the black bar in Weird Science, that was spawned from the fact that we loved Richard Pryor. We'd watch Richard Pryor movies on the weekend. And we would imitate this character called Mudball that Richard Pryor would do. And so it was really just a product of being Richard Pryor fans that John said, "Hey, why don't we create this scene where you go into a bar and do that?" That's the type of guy he was. To have a writer-director who was so empowering, who really builds you up, who made you feel strong enough to take those chances and to have fun, was a great person to begin my career with. I'll always tip my hat to John Hughes. He gave me my start in my career and I'll never overlook that.
For such a young actor, you seemed to be very aware that you were in danger of being permanently typecast. I read that you turned down roles in Ferris Bueller's Day Off [1986] and Pretty in Pink [1986] because of typecasting worries. Is that true?
It is true and it was for that reason. And I don't know what the repercussions were industry-wise but I felt that I was being true to myself in doing that. Even as a teenager, I've always thought in terms of longevity. My family's always been wonderful in terms of supporting me in that regard, in thinking of the long term. Robert Downey Jr.'s father, Robert Downey Sr., had a great line to me years ago. He was with Downey and I when we were writing a script together. He blurted out this line, "In the long haul, the short one won't make it!" [laughs] I had my mind set even at that age that I would continue to make films and hopefully be a presence in the industry for many years.
This article originally appeared in the April 2003 issue of Venice Magazine, when Kristin was still making her first inroads in Hollywood. She was just starting the production of Wicked.
by Terry Keefe
Kristin Chenoweth has just been through an experience that would make most performers have a nervous breakdown but she didn’t bat an eye. When we meet, she’s at the swank Renaissance Hollywood Hotel where ABC is presenting all of its newest shows and specials to the press. One of their crown jewels this winter is The Wonderful World of Disney’s production of Meredith Wilson’s "The Music Man," in which Kristin stars as Marian Paroo opposite Matthew Broderick, who plays con man Harold Hill. She recounts, “Yesterday, there was a room full of critics. There were 400 of them. And the producers of The Music Man asked me to sing, which they don’t usually do. I sang ‘Till There Was You.’ It was so fun. There’s just something about a live audience. I do great under pressure.” That shouldn’t be a surprise. Kristin has come to Hollywood via her conquering of Broadway, a place where there are no second takes if you make a mistake.
Now, how she got to Broadway - that’s a story in and of itself and it’s the stuff show biz dreams are made of. Kristin grew up in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and attended Oklahoma City University where she earned a bachelor degree in musical theater and a master’s in opera performance. Opera would give her one great opportunity in the form of a fully paid scholarship to Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts, but that opportunity would lead to another very different one. Remembers Kristin, “Two weeks before the Academy of Vocal Arts program started, I moved to New York just to help my friend move into his apartment. He went to an audition [for an off-Broadway production of Animal Crackers] and I said, ‘You know, I'm just going to go to see what it's like.’ And I went and I waited 7 hours because I wasn't even a member of the union. But I was so fascinated by the process, with people coming in and out, and I signed up for the Non-Equity list.” At the very end of the day, Kristin finally got in for her audition, which she nailed so incredibly that the casting people asked her with wide eyes, “Who are you?!” Kristin replied, “I'm just here for fun. I'm from Oklahoma and I'm going to be an opera singer." They said, "Well, do you have an agent?" She said, "No, I don't have an agent." And they said, "Who would we call if we want to offer you this part?" Kristin answered, “Well, I guess my dad.” Sure enough, she got the part and her father was the one who negotiated her first contract. It would be a difficult decision to forgo the Academy of Vocal Arts to take on Broadway, but it proved fortuitous because she quickly found herself booked solid for the next two years doing all types of theater, from an off-Broadway production of The Fantastics to productions at the famed Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Kristin would eventually make her debut on Broadway in a production of Moliere’s Scapin. Then in 1997, her role as Precious McGuire in the musical Steel Pier would earn her an award from Theatre World. And looming on the horizon was a well-intentioned but oft-harangued boy named Charlie Brown.
You may remember the character of Sally from the Peanuts comic strips by Charles Schulz. As Charlie Brown’s sarcastic little sister, she sort of served as an ongoing Greek chorus for everything her older brother did and provided some of the strip’s best laughs. But for whatever reason, the character wasn’t included in the original musical of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. When a revival of the show was planned for the 1998-99 season on Broadway, the producers decided to write Sally into the show, with Kristin creating the role. Rave reviews followed and Kristin was soon catapulted upwards faster than Charlie Brown when Lucy yanks the football away from him. She would sweep the Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards as the season’s “Best Featured Actress in a Musical.” That would lead to her being cast as Miss Lily St. Regis in an acclaimed ABC television adaptation of Annie in 1999, and she would also be offered her own sitcom, “Kristin,” which would appear briefly on NBC in 2001. Somewhere in the middle of all that she found time to release a critically lauded CD entitled Let Yourself Go.
“Let yourself go” would also be good advice for her character Marian, the single librarian from "The Music Man," who can’t quite bring herself to see that the love of her life might have just stepped off the train in the form of Matthew Broderick’s Harold Hill. With her portrayal of Marian, Kristin proves her mettle in a dramatic musical role, something she had been looking to do for some time. Says Kristin, “I'm usually known for the comedic roles. This was so different. I knew I could do it. But I'm so glad the producers thought of me for this part. I also wanted to take the role because of the acting. It's a very dramatic and very intimate piece. And the love story is so strong in our version. I loved what the producers had in mind for it - they wanted to make it realistic.” And realistic it is indeed. As directed by Jeff Bleckner, the style of "The Music Man" doesn’t scrimp on the flash you want in the musical numbers, but it also feels quite real, unlike the fantasy “musical land” of many such adaptations. When Harold Hill steps off the train into Marian’s town in Iowa at the beginning of the film, you feel like you’re really there, and the characters are also very well-developed in between the songs, so that they’re much more than archetypes. The result is a delightful reinvention of The Music Man which preserves the great tunes of the original but also feels more contemporary. And Kristin is really given a chance to show all of America why she is so beloved on Broadway. Her lovely voice soars and you’ll be rooting for the lovelorn Marian from the first scene.
Had you done The Music Man in any form before, like in high school or college?
Kristin Chenoweth: Never, never. It seemed to kind of come into my life all of a sudden. I did "The Music Man" the movie and then I did it at the Hollywood Bowl. I had just come from this intimate camera thing and then to the Hollywood Bowl, which is one of the bigger places in the world [laughs]. And I'm a creature of the theatre, but the director was like "Okay Kristin, you need to bring it [motions for 'playing it bigger']." I had been [playing it smaller for the camera] for four months in the movie version, but finally I got back there, back to playing it to the last row.
Was it a hard adjustment originally to have to bring the material "down" for the small screen?
It wasn't for me. I think The Music Man is a much more intimate piece than people realize. I think Robert Preston (who played Harold Hill in the 1962 film adaptation) is amazing and I loved what he did obviously, it's classic. But I think the material stands out to be played in a much smaller way. I know that one of the things Matthew and I wanted to do was to really bring out the love story rather than just saying "Here it is!" We really wanted to make it heartfelt. I really wanted people to root for Marian to be with him. I wanted people to go, "Be with him! Give up all your beliefs and everything and go for it." And I think a lot of women, especially today, can relate to that. Being afraid to let go. I know in my own personal life I've had that issue. Trusting and being afraid to let go when you realize you really do love somebody. I also really wanted to play it that she hadn't found the right guy, that she wasn't going to settle. Instead of "poor Marian, she's the old maid." And again, I think a lot of women are picky and they don't want to settle. Why should they? Why should anyone really? They want their intellectual equal.
Did you and Matthew spend much time talking about the characters before the production began?
Oh yes. And we did six weeks of rehearsal before. You know, any time you're doing a musical, it's not like you just show up and do the scene. Half the time with musicals you spend in rehearsals just doing the numbers. For me, it was just singing a lot. There was the song "My White Knight," which wasn't in the original movie, and I wanted to really work on that a lot so it was more conversational. So it wasn't just [mimics a musical drumbeat intro] and then [sings] song! So it came from the character. My natural inclination, because I'm a Broadway person, is to really "sell it," just sell it. And I guess in that way I did have to pull back because this is a different character than Lily St. Regis [does Lily voice] who is so out there. It was a challenge for me, and I think a good transition for me to play the leading lady. It was important for me to do.
The musical is making a comeback in Hollywood. It seems like this is a good time to be you.
I'm very excited. For me, it's like "C'mon, let's have that trickle-down effect from Moulin Rouge! and Chicago just keep on going." Because it has been frustrating for a performer like me who is very unique, and who sings and dances. Even on Broadway. Because not a lot of the new stuff I'm really right for, i.e. Rent. I can do it, but I don't really see myself that way. I'm really a product of the old-fashioned musical. I love doing stylized work. I just have an affinity for it. I think there are some people who are contemporary and do great in that and I like working in it, but there's an element of "old-fashionism" in me. I have an album out which is 30s and 40s music. It just seems so logical that I would do that record because if I believed in reincarnation, that era would have been a time I lived.
Are there any particular musicals you'd love to help make into films?
Mmm-hmm! On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Because as much as I love the Barbra Streisand movie, I think there's room now with the fantasy - she goes back in time, it would be really cool to film that stuff. We could do so much with it, with the camera. I hate to even touch Oklahoma! but you know, it's 2003. It's a different time. I'd love to do Oklahoma! Pajama Game is another really fun show.
The stars of Broadway used to be the biggest stars in America. Do you ever think that maybe you were born in the wrong era?
Yeah, I do. It's kind of frustrating because I do see myself in that way. And other people do too - I get asked that a lot. I do feel sometimes, "Gee, why couldn't I have been born 50 years prior?" But there's a reason I'm here now and the way I see it, maybe these (Hollywood musicals) are going to come back. Maybe I'll get some opportunities to do some cool things for film. I'm all for people doing more musicals on television also. Because I grew up in Oklahoma and I didn't get to come to New York whenever I wanted. I never even saw a Broadway show until I was in college. My parents took me to the road touring companies of the shows and to the ballet. That was my fix. When they played The Sound of Music or The Wizard of Oz (on television), I was like, "Nobody mess with me, man. The Sound of Music is on. Everybody get out, I'm having my cookies and I'm watching the show!"
Besides the fact that the music is great in them, is there anything about the older musicals which you identify with personally?
Yeah, I think you can be sexy but I think it's even sexier to have an innocence about you, not to give it all up. And that's very popular of that time. Not a slam against any singers today, but it's just so all out there. That's why we have weight obsession, and 10 year olds are wearing hardly any clothes. I'm not trying to get on my soap box, but I just think the public is speaking and we do long for a more innocent time. We live in a time, as you know, when the world is completely up in arms. We really don't know what's going to happen. So things like Music Man, I think people are just going to eat it up. We have "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?", "The Bachelorette," "Joe Millionaire," "Fear Factor." I mean, how many of these shows can we have? Don't we have enough reality in our lives already? How about a little fantasy? Where the stories actually make sense and hold up, you know?
Tell us about how your involvement with the role of Sally in Charlie Brown originated.
This was the revival. They had done it in like '67. They had the role of Patty in there normally, not Peppermint Patty, just Patty. Kind of like an amalgam of all the girls. And when I auditioned, I go in and sing and the director looks at me and goes, "Look, I have an idea but I can't tell you about it right now because it has to get ok'd by Charles Schulz. But I can't tell you about it until you tell me if you're going to do the job or not." [laughs] So I went home and thought about it and my intuition said, "Do this job. Doesn't matter what you play, do this job." I show up the first day of rehearsal and they give us all this paraphernalia, as part of the Schulz estate, for our characters - books, hats, etc. and when they got to me they laid down Sally and said, "You're going to play Charlie Brown's little sister Sally." Basically I got to go through all of the comic strips Charles Schulz ever wrote and pick my own material.
And Sally had some great material in those comics!
Fabulous material, little did I know. We went out of town and did three or four cities before we did New York. I had that luxury of trying things out and doing it out of town. What was so funny is that I would read a strip and think, "This is going to be a huge laugh. Huge." I'd go out there and do it and it'd be crickets. And then I'd read another strip and go, "I don't know if that's going to work." And it would be a huge laugh. By the time I was in New York, I was good to go.
Did you ever meet Charles Schulz?
I didn't. But he sent me flowers when I was nominated for the Tony Award. He called me. I was like "who's on the phone?" I couldn't believe it. He said, "I want you to know I've heard from everybody how special you are and that you really bring this character to life." And there was something in his voice that broke my heart because he was thanking me. And I was like, "Well, thank you for writing it!" And then when I won the Tony, he called me and then he passed away not long after that. And his family called and asked if I would sing at his memorial. I was in the middle of something, I can't remember what it was I was doing, but I took a day off and I got in trouble for it too. Not in trouble, but they were not happy. But I was like, "You know what? I'm going. This man is, first of all, an American icon. And he means a lot to me and I never met him." That's one of my biggest regrets in life, that I didn't get to meet him.
What did you sing at the service?
[sings briefly] “Happiness is/Two kinds of ice cream” - I would say it wasn't my best because I was very choked up. But it didn't matter because his spirit was there, you know?
Did you get any negative feedback from Broadway people when you went off to do your sitcom “Kristin?”
Not that I was doing it, but that there was an abandonment of Broadway. Which I thought was stupid because if I have a sitcom, more people will know who I am and when I come back to Broadway, more people will buy tickets. Everybody knows I'm a singer and I'm a musical theater person. Everybody. And I will always be that. That's my soul, my heart, all that stuff. And I will never abandon theater because it's just my favorite thing to do. But it's like this year I could have done Thoroughly Modern Millie or Music Man. What am I going to choose? Music Man, because more people are going to see it. And it's not just to advance my career, it's because more people out in Idaho are going to see the show than will ever see me on Broadway. There are some Broadway stars who stay strictly on the stage. But I'm an actor, why wouldn't I want to do all of it? I've just signed another deal with Universal to do another pilot. I was just asked by a journalist downstairs,"Why would you even consider doing another sitcom? Because you don't need it." And I said, "Because I like it. It's fun work! It's a challenge every week to do a new script." I want to work and I love working on TV. I do concert work everywhere, I'm doing the Kennedy Center. Jennifer Lopez does it all, why can't I do different things?
What's coming up next?
I'm going to do a new Broadway show called Wicked, it's the back story between Glinda the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West. And I play Glinda the Good, who's not really so good. She's got a lot of issues, that girl. [laughs] Of course, that makes it fun to play. So that's my next big year commitment. We'll open on Broadway next Halloween.
You seem to be on the verge of pulling off a career few have done before, with success on both Broadway and in Hollywood. Is there anyone whose career you look to for inspiration, who you’d like to emulate?
It's hard because the people I want to emulate are Barbra Streisand and Julie Andrews. It's hard because it's a different time. But I do think there's a way "to do it all." Someone like Julie Andrews because not only was she given this voice from God, but one thing I really like about her is she's a really good actress. Not just The Sound of Music, but Victor/Victoria. She's so funny and she's not just a singer, she's an actor. Also in her personal life she's a real person, she's a gem. I've had the opportunity to meet her a couple of times. I did the Kennedy Center Honors for her, when they were honoring her. That was very intimidating. But she's somebody who I would like to emulate because she's done it all. I do a lot of things which are written for me. I'm not easily fit into a slot, so you can either look at that as good or bad. I'm not going to be Belle in Beauty and the Beast. Although I've played roles like that, really where I seem to shine are in shows where I got to originate the roles. That's what every actor wants really, because then they don't have to follow in anybody's footsteps.
This interview with Jerry Hall originally appeared in the August 2003 issue of Venice Magazine, during Jerry's run as Mrs. Robinson in the play of "The Graduate".
"Ms. Hall, you are trying to seduce us!" As a riveting Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate," Jerry Hall does exactly that. by Terry Keefe
Benjamin Braddock doesn't stand a chance against Mrs. Robinson today. It's the beginning of August in Manhattan, and under the hand of director Peter Lawrence, the National Touring production of "The Graduate" is running through the famous seduction scene between Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson in a large Broadway rehearsal space. As Mrs. Robinson, Jerry Hall puts the moves on the hapless Benjamin (played to jittery perfection by Rider Strong of Cabin Fever and "Boy Meets World" fame) and some legendary lines are uttered. Rider remarks nervously, "Mrs. Robinson, you are trying to seduce me." And after a good laugh and a few disarming comments to the contrary, Jerry comes back with Mrs. Robinson's infamous "Would you like me to seduce you?" Over Benjamin's protests, she proceeds to do just that, setting the groundwork for the affair that follows by letting Benjamin know she's available to him and thereafter stripping nude briefly. After that fateful encounter, Benjamin is hooked, just as the audience will be. Even in this bare rehearsal setting, Jerry Hall is a magnetic presence that you can't take your eyes off of. Incredibly poised, she creates a Mrs. Robinson of great physical power, who practically hypnotizes Benjamin with the strength of her stare. In her voice, there's an underlying current of challenge to Benjamin, as if she's saying, "I dare you to walk away from me. I know you can't." There is also a layer of sadness and decadence in the performance which achieves the difficult task of making you feel a bit sorry for Mrs. Robinson, even as she's wrecking the lives of everyone around her.
The show is, of course, based on the landmark 1967 film of the same title, directed by Mike Nichols, and starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft. And in turn, the film was adapted from the 1962 novel by Charles Webb. For those uninitiated as to the plot, Benjamin Braddock has just graduated from college with honors and has returned to spend the summer at home with his parents. He wants a future that will be "different," although the staid upper middle-class Californian existence of his family offers exactly the opposite. Confused and naive, Benjamin embarks on an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the bored wife of his father's business partner. It's all just a fun diversion until Benjamin meets Mrs. Robinson's daughter Elaine (played in this production by Devon Sorvari), and falls in love with her. The play opened in London in March 2000, with Kathleen Turner as Mrs. Robinson, and was an instant hit. Jerry Hall would soon step into Mrs. Robinson's sultry shoes on the West End for a successful run of a few hundred performances. And she'll arrive this month in L.A. for a series of shows at the Wilshire Theatre.
Although "The Graduate" has become the stage role that Jerry Hall is most famous for, she's been practically living onstage these past few years, also appearing in the West End productions of "The Vagina Monologues" (as well as in the North American touring performance of that show in Austin, Texas) and "The Play What I Wrote." She also recently received raves for her 52-minute monologue in "Picasso's Women," which toured England. There were some successful prior acts in her life, of course. Hall is one of the world's most famous models, having embarked on that career at the age of 16, when she left Gonzales, Texas, to move to Paris. Along the way, she became equally famous as the wife, and then ex-wife, of Mick Jagger (who she speaks about fondly and regards as a close friend). But from the looks of things, it seems safe to say that she'll also be remembered for her acting talent. During the course of our conversation, she expresses her desire to continue acting on stage for the rest of her life and mentions Blanche in "A Streetcar Named Desire" as a future dream role.
There are two things that immediately came to mind when speaking to Jerry Hall in person. The first is that she barely appears to have aged since her modeling shots from the 1970s. The second is that she makes you feel like the only person in the room, despite the fact that there are several people working in different sections of the rehearsal space during our interview. Like we said, Benjamin Braddock never stood a chance.
What were some of the biggest challenges of creating your Mrs. Robinson?
Jerry Hall: Well, you always have to have sympathy for her. But she's having inappropriate sex with a young boy who's her best friend's son. So that's horrible, that's really not good. She's an alcoholic. She's a bitch, she says bitchy things to her daughter all the time. But you have to find the sympathy too. She's an intelligent woman, she's very well-educated. She's in a loveless marriage with this boring guy because she got pregnant young and had to get married. And she's restless. In that time period, a lot of women were frustrated with just being housewives. And so instead of just giving up, she's fighting. She's fighting her own battle. So I admire her for that. And in the end, she wants her daughter to rebel, you know? She's pushing her to rebel. So she does have some redeeming qualities that you have to find.
She's so matter of fact about the negative portions of her life. Like when she asks Benjamin, "Did you know I'm an alcoholic?"
She likes to shock. She gets a perverse kick out of shocking. I mean, the whole thing with her being nude in front of him. And it's funny how even nowadays when you see somebody nude on stage, it's shocking. The audience is shocked.
What do you feel from the audience at the moment you appear nude in this show?
They're shocked! [laughs] Benjamin's so freaked out and so they're [also] laughing. It's a lovely thing for the audience to be both shocked and laughing. I think laughter is very good for people. I love comedy. Comedy's the kind of thing I'm trying to do the most.
Did you find you were a natural at comedy right from the beginning?
No. I love doing it. I find it really funny, and that's kind of contagious. If you sort of find it funny, the audience will sort of find it funny. But to do comedy, the timing has to be exact, you know? And you have to play it straight, really straight, otherwise it's not funny. You can't play it for laughs. Comedy really comes from the seriousness of it.
This is a role that was created by Kathleen Turner, onstage at least. Is there anything you did to deliberately make the role your own?
Well, I didn't try to copy her at all. She's an amazing actress. She has such strength. She delivers lines like Mae West. And she's very, very funny. But we're very different. You just make it your own. It's a big mistake to try to copy, even a tiny portion, because it throws it all off.
Did you study the film much prior to doing the show or did you choose not to look at it?
I watched it like three years ago, once, before doing the show the first time. But then I decided not to watch it again. Because it's very different. The show is actually more like the book. The book is much more helpful to get the character the way she's written in the play.
How were you cast originally?
John Reid, the original producer in London, used to be the manager of Elton John. He's a friend of mine. I had been to the Cannes Film Festival and was wearing all these jewels and things. All these pictures in magazines and in the papers. And I guess he saw that and said, "Oh, she'd be a good Mrs. Robinson." I'd been to see the play with Kathleen Turner and loved it so much. And Sacha Brooks, the other producer, was there. He said he saw me outside smoking a cigarette in-between and he thought, "She'd make a good Mrs. Robinson." So the two of them at the same time sort of thought, "Let's get Jerry in for an audition." I got an acting coach to help me and I worked on an audition. I worked really, really hard and memorized the whole thing. I went in and auditioned and they were like, "Great! You've got the part." I was really thrilled.
Were you nervous the first night in front of an audience?
Oh God, yes. On my first preview, around 100 people stood up and took pictures while I was standing there nude. It caused a riot with them trying to get them to stop. And then they [the British press] reviewed the first preview.
Which they're not supposed to do.
It was just the worst. It was like walking through fire, I was just getting through it. But we got through it. And then some of the people came back and reviewed it on the right night and they wrote some nice things. We had a huge hit and we were sold out for 6 months. So it was good.
Because you started as a model, has it been a challenge to get the press to take you seriously as an actress?
I got my best reviews on my 3rd play. Because my second was "The Vagina Monologues," and they were like, "Well, anybody can do that." They were quite nice but then when I did my 52-minute monologue (in "Picasso's Women"), they were like "Wow!" So that was nice. But look, like anything in life, acting isn't something you just get up and do. Especially theater acting. You need to practice. You need to work at it. You need to get up vocal power. It's just been an amazing learning process. But I'm totally hooked on the magic of it.
Do you have a favorite scene in the play?
I love the scene which is gearing up to the hotel bedroom scene. When I'm asking him if he's a virgin, asking him if this is his first time. Very awkward, you know [laughs].
Did you "find" Mrs. Robinson again pretty quickly after the hiatus from doing the role, between this production and the West End production, or did it take some time?
It took a while. It's kind of hard in the beginning whenever you go into rehearsal with a bunch of strangers. And you're terrible and feel awkward. And everyone's doing their bit but badly. It takes awhile to get good. A lot of bonding things are going on too, and I like that. You gear up and you start to get up to speed. It's a whole growing process. There's a very different dynamic with different actors. But I love the actors [on this production] and I love the director. Peter is beautiful. He's great, he helped me a lot. It's also always fun to come back to something that I've done and have another go at it, having had a lot of work in-between.
How many Benjamins have you been through since you started doing the show?
Three [laughs, indicates Rider Strong]. He's the third one. They're all different and they've all been very good.
Do you remember the first time you saw the film version of The Graduate?
Oh yeah, I do. I loved it. I adore Anne Bancroft. She's one of my favorite actresses. I always try to see anything that she's in. If I read in TV Guide that she's in some movie, I always make an effort to see it. That movie was such an important movie for the times. It was about young people having a voice. Of course, people can say it's dated but I don't think so. Because it's such an internal story of this boy and it's a story about love. How Benjamin and Elaine love each other and through all sorts of obstacles they manage to get together in the end. So it's like the classic fairy rescue story - the prince gets the princess from the wicked mother [laughs]. People also always like a sexual comedy, and there aren't that many of them. I always hear people tell me, "Oh God, that reminds me of when I was 17, this woman who seduced me. It was my first older woman." [laughs] So that brings out this kind of fantasy for a lot of men, there's that whole thing that people enjoy. Also, having done the play for so long, it's always amazing to me how many different things you can get out of this play [as a performer]. Using the same words you can still find new meaning. I think one of the great messages about this play is that parents shouldn't try to control their children. Let your children be who they are. Let them have a voice. And I think that's one of the hardest lessons to learn as a parent. I have teenagers and it's hard to not say something sometimes. You have to let them be who they are. That's one of the things that touches me about the play. It's fun also playing the older woman who's a seductress, you don't get many parts like that [laughs].
Have you talked to any of the principals from the film version since doing the play?
Mike Nichols came to see me in the play in London and he sent me a big box of olive oil. Because [in the show] I rub olive oil on my skin. And he wrote me a note which said, "This is to rub all over your beautiful body." He's lovely. I did another play which he came to see me in called "The Play What I Wrote." Mike Nichols took it to Broadway. They asked me to come to Broadway to do it, but I was doing another play then. But I did go do it in Belfast, Ireland, which was great. Great audience. I loved it. The audience there is kind of rowdy. They drink a lot and like to have a good time. And that play is kind of rowdy.
What would be your typical routine during the day of a performance?
Well, I sleep to 11. Because I think it's very important to be "peak" at 8 PM. You just can't do that if you wake up too early. And I do yoga every day and I meditate every day. I think the meditation's very important to keep focus. And then I spend time with my kids. I've already got my head in the part by about 3 PM. You have to save yourself a bit. You get like an athlete so you're really on, mentally and physically, at 8 PM. Then afterwards, you get this adrenaline rush and you've got to eat and chat with everyone and have a drink. But you can't stay up too late [laughs].
This interview with Halle appeared originally back in the February 2002 edition of Venice Magazine. It was on the eve of her Best Actress win at the 2002 Oscars.
WITH A LANDMARK OSCAR FOR HER SEARING PORTRAYAL OF THE GRITTY BELLE OF MONSTER'S BALL, HALLE BERRY'S ON A ROLL by Terry Keefe
Halle Berry wasn't looking to take the easy path to fame and fortune when she went in to read for her first movie role in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991). Originally called in for the fairly conventional role of Lee's wife, Berry pushed Lee to cast her in another part - that of Vivian the young crack addict. It was a telling move as to the type of acting career Berry was seeking. This totally unglamorous role was not what most people would have expected from the young and beautiful Ms. Berry, but it presented a challenge for the young actress that she embraced with passion. Berry's Vivian was a strung-out bundle of nervous tics, grime, and explosive anger. It was a great career decision because it established her as a serious talent in her very first film; she clearly was not just another beautiful-model-turned-beautiful-actress. Of course, it's undeniable that her near-perfect looks and charisma hark back to the Golden Age of Hollywood when stars were stunners who could stop traffic. But she's also that rarity of rarities, a movie star with true acting talent to burn and a desire to continue to push that talent as far as she can. And as we all know, some 11 years after Jungle Fever, that combination of talent and desire earned her the honor of being the first African-American woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, for her work in Monster's Ball. The entire world watched on March 24th as she was overcome with emotion and gushed, "This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It's for the women that stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox. And it's for every nameless, faceless woman that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened." She had come a very long way.
How long a way? Well, all the way from a land quite a few miles east of Hollywood - Cleveland, Ohio, where Halle was born on August 14, 1968 and named after the nearby Halle Brothers Department store. Her teenage years saw great success in beauty pageants, as she won the Miss Teen All-American Pageant at the age of 17 in 1985 and was first runner-up in the Miss USA Pageant a year later. She became a model shortly thereafter and then segued into acting with a few television appearances, followed by her big-screen debut in Jungle Fever. Lead roles followed in the films Strictly Business (1991), The Last Boy Scout with Bruce Willis (1991), Boomerang (1992) with Eddie Murphy, The Flintstones(1994), Executive Decision (1996), and Bulworth (1998). Then came the HBO film Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999), which also re-introduced Halle Berry to the world in a sense. Berry produced the movie and gave a performance that was quite simply a revelation.
It was no easy role to pull off. The real-life Dorothy Dandridge was a complex individual who was incredibly talented, driven, and loving to her friends and family. But she also harbored a great inner loneliness and a self-destructive streak. This was partially due to the sexual abuse she had suffered as a young woman and which seemed to send her on a lifelong series of destructive relationships with all the wrong men. Berry wrapped all of those diverse threads into her portrayal, giving us a glimpse into Dandridge's golden soul in the process, along with the demons that haunted her. There were also the challenges of recreating the singing and dancing of Dorothy Dandridge, performances which left audiences spellbound so many years ago. And yes, Berry managed to leave us equally spellbound, particularly when she recreated the musical numbers from Dandridge's landmark film Carmen Jones (1954). You forgot you weren't watching the real Dandridge, which is perhaps the greatest compliment for any actor starring in a bio pic. The film was to earn Berry a Golden Globe and a great deal of critical respect.
The box office would also show its respect for her as she donned the black cape of Storm, the mutant superhero goddess who controlled the weather, in director Bryan Singer's smash hit X-Men (2000) which was based on the most popular comic book series of all time. Then there was last summer's Swordfish where she starred opposite John Travolta and was also reunited with X-Men co-star Hugh Jackman. Both films were hits, further cementing Berry's star status. It would have been easy for her to coast on her fame with less challenging roles. But she did exactly the opposite when she jumped into the cauldron of Monster's Ball.
Directed by Marc Forster, Monster's Ball features Berry as Letitia Musgrove, an emotionally beaten-down woman in the rural south whose convict husband Lawrence (played by Sean Combs) is put to death in the electric chair. Through a series of tragic circumstances, Letitia meets Hank (played by Billy Bob Thornton), the prison guard who presided over her husband's execution and who also is dealing with his own personal tragedy. Despite being the most unlikely of couples, they fall in love and manage to heal each other amongst the turmoil around them. Letitia's life is an ongoing train wreck which is difficult to watch, but you can't take your eyes off of her thanks to Berry's performance. She creates a subtle, nuanced arc in which Letitia slowly regains her strength and dignity. The film also features one of the rawest love scenes in recent memory between Berry and Thornton. But it's also one of the only times in recent memory that this type of scene is absolutely integral to the plot. These two characters have been through such hell at that point in the story that only an extreme physical catharsis could bring them together. Monster's Ball was shot on an extremely low-budget with all of the actors reportedly working for scale.
I reached Halle by phone while she was shooting the new James Bond film in London, where she plays a character named Jinx.
Tell us how you first became involved with Monster's Ball.
I first received the script from my manager who had gotten the script from (director) Marc Forster's agent. She passed it onto my manager already knowing that Marc really wasn't interested in me. But she thought I would be right for the role, and if my manager got me to read it, then maybe I would like it and I would fight for it. Which is exactly what happened. She kind of went behind his back (laughs).
So after you decided to fight for the role, what happened?
After I read it, I said `You're right. I have to play this part!' and so we worked on getting a meeting with Marc. From there it was just a process. There were no auditions - it's hard to really audition for a part like that. It was just a series of meetings and conversations and lunches and dinners, talking about it and just sort of fleshing out the character, and me trying to express how much passion I had for the project, how much I connected to her. How I saw her and ultimately how I saw her living through me. And also convincing Marc that I would do all the things it called for. So it was trying to convince him that I was really down to do it.
Once you were cast, what was your preparation process to become Leticia?
There was no real research. It was really just discovering how she lived in me and discovering things in my own life or my own experience to help bring the colors to her. So that was really my work as an actress - trying to figure out the nuances of her.
Leticia went through such tragedy in her life that it seems like hers would be a difficult skin to inhabit. Did you take her home with you at night?
When we worked on it, I really didn't leave her. We only shot in 21 days and we worked such long days that at the end of the day all I had time to do was go home, sleep, get up, and do it again. And I was in Louisiana, without my family. So for those 21 days, for all practical purposes, I was her. It was a good way to work on this character. I didn't have to worry about my family and going home and switching gears because I was on location by myself.
Monster's Ball is filled with so many intense scenes. What was the most difficult to shoot?
I think the scene where I sort of had to abuse my son (played by Coronji Calhoun). That was really hard because he was a real little boy. 10 years old and struggling with issues of obesity, you know? He wasn't an actor, never acted before. And I thought, 'Wow, I could psychologically really damage him.' I thought I could. I was afraid I would.
Was there anything you did during the shooting to make those scenes easier on him?
I just talked to him about the process of acting a lot. Explained things to him, methods that different people used, you know? I tried to give him a crash course in all the acting I knew. And then tried to hug him and kiss him a lot. Before the takes and after the takes. When I'd see him in the morning, I'd try to be as nurturing and as loving as I could all the time. We had a really good connection so that when we did work, he felt more like it was work and not me.
The film wouldn't have been as effective if the first love scene between you and Billy Bob Thornton wasn't as raw as it was. Did you have any hesitations about taking the role for that reason?
No, not at all. I knew it when I read it. I thought it was so pivotal. As a reader for the first time with the script, I kind of knew where it was going to go, where those two characters were going to end up. It's like when you read a romantic comedy, you know where they're going to end up, but it's the journey of how they get there that makes it interesting. I kept thinking, `How are these two polar opposites going to come together?' So when it did happen, it all made sense for me. I thought, `Oh, now I get it.' So I knew how important that scene would be to the movie.
You and Billy Bob must've had a real level of trust built up to do that scene.
He was great. He was as invested in it as I was. He was as naked, as committed to it, as vulnerable, as free as I was. I felt like I had a real partner. It wasn't the typical situation where the woman is usually the one who is sort of exploited, you know? We were in this scene together and that felt really good.
Is it true that Marc Forster gave you final cut over the scene?
Yes. That's the only way I think we both felt free enough to just go there. Because we knew that if we went too far and woke up the next morning and saw it, we could say `Oh-oh. What were we thinking? Axe it all out.' That gave us the freedom. We had that power. But we ended up leaving it all in (laughs). We didn't cut anything.
On a smaller film like Monster's Ball, there are fewer perks and luxuries than on a studio film. But are there more freedoms for an actor also?
What was great about it for me, because I had never really worked like that before, is that because there was no money we didn't have the luxury of time. We didn't have the luxury of shooting things over. It was a way of working where you come to the job totally prepared. And every day just following our instincts and going for it. Because we knew that we'll probably only get two shots at all the scenes, so it heightened our level of concentration and sort of our level of commitment because we knew we only had one or two takes and then we had to move on, because time doesn't allow us to do this all day. It heightened everyone's intensity. It was really great and felt really organic as a result of that.
Are you surprised at the level of acclaim the film has received or did you always think it had a shot at that?
I never thought that people would be nominated for Academy Awards. That was never in my thinking. I knew that it was a jewel of a movie. I knew that it was special when I read it. That's why I was willing to fight so hard for it. But I thought, `I don't know if people are really going to get this. I don't know if people are ready to deal with some of these issues.' But as an actor, I knew that the roles were just brilliant for actors to play, brilliant characters. Really colorful and full. I just didn't think anybody would be nominated for an Oscar, especially me (laughs).
I wanted to ask you a little bit about your earlier films. You had done some modeling and television work when you landed your first feature role, as the crack addict in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever. Was that first break tough to land?
Yeah, that was my first movie. Spike called me in to audition for the role of his wife originally. All I was up until that point was a model and I had done some beauty pageants, and I thought, `How can I shed this image?' And I asked him if I could read for the part of the crack kid in the movie and he let me do it and he eventually offered me that part. So that was a great way to start in the industry, sort of shedding my physical self and doing a little bit of a character piece. That was a great entry.
I understand your preparation for the role was pretty method-based and you went out and sort of lived the role?
At that point that was all I could do (laughs). I had no technique. I said, `Let me go and live on the street and try to be this girl as best I can.' So yeah, I didn't shower, I didn't shave. I went to a real crack den with an undercover police officer. These are things that today I doubt I would ever do, because it's too dangerous and it really doesn't make a lot of sense. But at that time, I was young and I was like, 'I don't know anything about crack. I've got to go see'(laughs).
A few years later you did such an amazing job playing the legendary Dorothy Dandridge. I wanted to ask about your preparation process.
The producing end was like 7 years on it. We tried to shop it around for 7 years, so that was a long prep time (laughs). But playing her, I had to work on singing, I had to learn to tap dance, all that physical stuff I had to do beforehand. I did a lot of interviewing with Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carroll, people that actually knew her. I spent a lot of time with these people, picking their brains, and sort of trying to get to the essence of who she was. And if I could find some common thread that they all said about her, I could use that. Basically I read every book, every piece of material there was to read about her. I saw tons of pictures. Her manager, who is still alive, let me go through everything that he had of hers, from personal private letters to all of her clothes, her jewelry he had, her family photo album. It was just about a six-month period before the shoot of finding every piece of information I possibly could.
You mentioned that you were looking for a common thread when you interviewed Dorothy Dandridge's close friends and associates. Did you find that common thread?
I would ask each one of them, `If you can tell me one thing that I must capture in order to play her, what would that be?'. They all said the same thing, `You have to find a way to be sad on every day, in every scene, in every moment. And always try to hide the sadness. And you'll get the essence of who she was.' I thought that because they all said that, it had to be true. I thought that was a good place for me to start.
Then you won the Golden Globe for your role as Dorothy. How were you feeling at that moment?
That was the first time I had ever been nominated for an award like that. And playing her life, there were so many opportunities she was not afforded. A lot of it had to do with the state of racial relations in the country at the time. And the other 50% was her own masochistic personality that led to her own downfall, you know? I felt very much when I was up there, that I was sort of up there for her. For all the things that didn't come her way, that in that moment I felt that it was really about her too. Because I was winning for telling her story, I felt very much like it was her moment.
And right now you're shooting the new Bond film. As the villain it`s reported. How does it feel playing the villain?
Well, that sort has been a little bit of a misrepresentation. It's not really clear exactly who this girl Jinx is (laughs). She's a little mysterious. Even to me right now.
Can you talk about the story at all?
No, I'm sorry. They make you sign your life away (laughs).
No problem. And after Bond, you've got the X-Men sequel coming up. How was it working with director Bryan Singer on the first one?
That was good. Directing that movie, there was so much pressure. The fans were just like, you know (laughs). Oh my god, I was so glad I wasn't him. And I thought he did a really great job dealing with all of the pressure. Every day he'd be on the internet, wanting to know what they said next. He did a really good job. He took those comic book characters and made them real. And I really loved that we weren't wearing, you know, silly suits and spandex. He really made them real people. I'm hoping that in the next one they'll even become more real.
Did you read a lot of the old X-Men comics before playing the famous character of Storm?
You know, I didn't. Bryan didn't want it. The people who didn't grow up with the series, he didn't want us to. He wanted us to read the script and read the back story that he provided us. Because all the characters changed from decade to decade, and they sort of went off in different directions. So he thought it would be really confusing and he thought it would be easier, and I think rightfully so, not to go back and read all the comic books. I read some, that pertained to the way he wanted Storm to be played. Those were the ones he suggested that I read and he gave me.
So what's next after the X-Men sequel?
It won't be being a superhero, I can tell you that much, after Bond and X-Men (laughs). I want to go do another Monster's Ball, another little character. I'm seeking that out right now.
This interview with Donnie originally appeared in the March 2003 issue of Venice Magazine. At the time, I think a New Kids reunion was the last thing on his mind, as he was determined to prove himself as an actor. Some real acting success seems to have allowed him to revisit that part of his past and embrace it once again. Good for him.
by Terry Keefe
When Donnie Wahlberg was one of the biggest pop stars in the world as part of the New Kids on the Block, it wouldn’t have seemed such a stretch that he would one day become an actor. But few would have predicted that he would turn into one of the more daring and interesting actors around. He has. Back in the summer of 1999, you could practically hear a collective “That was Donnie Wahlberg?” from audience members across America coming out of director M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. As Vincent Grey, the tormented former patient of Bruce Willis’ doctor character, Wahlberg was both heartbreaking and terrifying to watch. The actor had dropped a few dozen pounds to give himself an emaciated look, but what was even more captivating was what was coming from within: Vincent Grey’s desperate cry for help which haunts the movie throughout and stays with you years after seeing it for the first time.
He’ll be stunning you again shortly as the mysterious Duddits in Dreamcatcher, which is directed by Lawrence Kasdan and adapted from the Stephen King novel of the same title. The story follows four adult friends - Jonesy (Damian Lewis), Henry (Thomas Jane), Pete (Timothy Olyphant), and Beaver (Jason Lee) - who have known each other from childhood and who are spending the weekend at a hunting cabin, an annual ritual for them. More than just mere friendship binds them together. When they were kids, they rescued the enigmatic and mentally challenged boy Duddits from some bullies. And in exchange Duddits gifted them with amazing mental powers which as children they together used for acts of good, such as finding a lost adolescent girl in the woods of their hometown in Maine. But when they arrive at their cabin for their retreat this time, they’re quickly overcome by a sense of impending doom. Something awful is in those woods, something which could destroy all of mankind. And the friends all know that this menace is the reason Duddits brought them together in the first place so many years ago and that they have to seek him out again in order to fully understand what they must do.
When we’re reintroduced to the adult Duddits, it’s the most pivotal moment in the entire film and requires an actor with the riveting screen presence to make the audience immediately understand that the tide of the story is about to turn. Like Shyamalan before him, Kasdan was wise in choosing Wahlberg for the task of anchoring a pivotal part of his film. Duddits is a man of few words and in a short amount of screen time with little dialogue, Wahlberg not only makes the dramatic reintroduction of the character, but he also conveys what has happened to Duddits’ physically: not only is he dying of leukemia but his physicality is breaking down in other ways, not all of them explainable. He also makes it clear that the mystery that has long lurked within Duddits is about to reveal itself, that things are about to get very hot and that Duddits is about to take center stage.
Wahlberg is also currently center stage in the enthralling television series “Boomtown,” as LAPD Detective Joel Stevens, along with a stellar cast which includes Mykelti Williamson as Stevens’ partner, Neal McDonough as a delightfully ruthless D.A., Nina Garbiras as an ambitious reporter, and Lana Parrilla as a paramedic. Each episode of the show follows a case from the perspective of multiple characters - usually of the leads but also sometimes through the eyes of supporting characters. It’s a concept that could easily become gimmicky, but it doesn’t because the show doesn’t rely on Rashomon-like revelations too often. The multiple viewpoints are used just as frequently to deepen the story and the characters as they are to surprise. The show has struggled in the ratings but NBC is giving it a renewed push this month. Seek it out, you won’t be disappointed. One of the new episodes, “Home Invasion,” is as riveting a piece of television as you will see anywhere. As Joel Stevens, Wahlberg is the heart of the show as a man who wants to believe that the world can get better but who is haunted not only by what he sees everyday on his job, but also what he sees at home. With him everywhere he carries the knowledge that his wife Kelly (Megan Ward) recently attempted suicide after the death of their baby and that it could happen again. When an elderly African-American man in the pilot episode scatters the ashes of his dead grandson in the L.A. Reservoir, he asks Wahlberg and Williamson if they have any prayers. Wahlberg replies, “I’m all out, man.” And you believe it. You also believe that praying is exactly what Joel Stevens is doing inside. Don’t miss this show.
Along the path between Vincent Gray and Duddits, Wahlberg starred as 2nd Lt. C. Carwood Lipton in the amazing World War II story of the Army’s Easy Company, Band of Brothers, easily the most realistic depiction of war ever made. He also starred in the film Diamond Men (2001), with Robert Forster.
When you were playing Duddits in Dreamcatcher, what did you imagine was in his head? Was Duddits fully aware of the secret of his mystery?
Donnie Wahlberg: Well, when I auditioned for Duddits, I did a cold audition. My sheet that I got from my agent said (the characters of) Duddits or Beaver. So I went in and read for the role of Beaver. And Larry Kasdan was like, “Well, what about Duddits?” I said, “I thought I was supposed to pick one.” And Larry said, “No, I want you to read both.” So I did Duddits cold and I got the job. I didn’t really speak to Larry much (about Duddits) until we were ready to shoot when Larry came up to me and gave me one note. He said, “Donnie, Duddits is like the Godfather.” I said, “Larry, what am I going to do with that note?” [laughs] But then I thought about it and what he was trying to say was, “Don’t worry about all the other stuff. Duddits just needs to have a presence, behind all that might be going on with him, he needs to have a presence. Or a sense of behind the sweetness and the sense of comforting that he gives, he needs to know a little bit more than everyone else.” So I understood that. And that note, while shocking at first, turned out to make complete sense to me. So what I started to think about was, “Well, what does he know?” There’s more going on than just the mentally challenged guy who’s dying of leukemia.
Did you see the performance of the child playing the younger Duddits and tailor your performance as the older Duddits to match that in any way?
No, I shot before the child. I had wanted to work with the child so that we could do something similar. But then Larry was like, “No, don’t do that.” So I was like, “Good, then I’m just going to do what I’m going to do.” And Larry didn’t really worry about it. He just kind of said, “Go for it.” I think with Larry it was like, “Whatever you’re doing, it seems to be working. So I’m not going to try to figure out the science of what you’re doing, Donnie, ” I think he was saying. “And if it doesn’t seem right, I’ll tell you.”
What other types of preparations did you do to play Duddits?
I watched a lot of kids. I met with a doctor in Canada. He works with mentally challenged kids. But mostly kids with Down Syndrome. He brought me a bunch of video tapes and I would watch them. And some of the kids were really normal and you wouldn’t even know they were mentally challenged. But as I studied the kids, I would just watch all of them. Like maybe 10 kids. I would watch all 10 of them. And then I would sort of say, “Okay, now I’m going to find one who really connects with me. That I really feel. And I’m going to really watch this kid.” But what happened was, as I would watch all of them, I couldn’t really see what was wrong with them. I could only see what was right with them. The more you watch these kids, the more you see how normal they are. The problematic stuff was never jumping out at me. It was like, “Wow, look at that kid. He’s really normal, really bright.” I don’t know if it was a mental block, like my mind wouldn’t let me look at the problematic stuff. So I was like, “What do you do? Because if I imitate any of these kids, I’m only zeroing in on the normal stuff. So I kind of realized that I’m just going to go back to what I did during the audition and just be that and build on that.
There was a real feeling of trepidation that came through in the performance, because Duddits knew what was about to happen.
It’s that Godfather thing. When Larry said Duddits is like the Godfather, that doesn’t mean he’s the big tough guy and that he’s “the man.” If Duddits is the Godfather and knows more than everyone else knows, then he knows that something really, really bad can and probably will happen. So there’s always that thing of inevitable doom that I tried to keep with the character.
Let’s talk about “Boomtown.” Is it accurate that the Joel Stevens role was written for you?
(Series executive producer and writer) Graham Yost is funny because he probably did write it for me, but he’ll say he wrote it “with me in mind” because if I passed on it, he wouldn’t want anyone to know he actually wrote it for me [laughs]. So he’s careful with his words, but he wrote the big episode I did in Band of Brothers [Episode 7]. I carried that episode, it was the big episode for Lipton. So we got to work together. Before we actually shot that episode, I asked him if he could come and meet with me because I had some ideas for the script. He took the ideas and ran with them and made them great. Then he saw my work and we developed a really strong mutual respect. I think he modeled Joel after himself. In his mind I think he would say that Joel is the character closest to him. And I think with that he started to think about who could play this person and he thought of me. It’s flattering when I think of it in those terms. He told me, “I think Joel is sort of like me.” So when you’re playing a character most like the writer, you’ve got to figure it’s going to be a good part [laughs].
Do you think the show is finding the audience it deserves?
This is where it gets sketchy because I think we have found an audience for sure. The last three episodes that aired had really strong numbers. And they grew every week. And they grew the second half hour every week. After a season on TV, I know that’s a big thing. We’ve averaged between 10.5 to 12.5 million viewers every week pretty much. That’s a lot of people. So I think we have a good audience and the thing is how do we make that build? How do we build that audience? We’ve gone through so many changes in the first season in terms of the structure of the show and what is really important to focus on. The show has really evolved a lot. I think now, with the last six episodes, we’ve really found a formula that works. But through all that we’ve maintained a very steady and loyal audience. So the question is now if we’ve figured out the formula, do we get to bring in the new fans? The episode “Home Invasion,” for example, will be the first time we air against something besides “The Practice,” which has a lot of female viewers. And if they tune into “Boomtown,” it’s the perfect episode for them to see first. There are some intimate moments, and some sexy moments, without trying to be sexy. When we screened it at work, all the women on the crew, 50 of them, they all said hands-down it was their favorite episode. And that’s good.
A Band of Brothers looked like it was one difficult shoot.
It was like war, you know? It was like World War II. Except we didn’t die and we didn’t kill people. It was difficult. It was really, really hard. We had to really be soldiers for that period. And ironically, like soldiers we complained [laughs]. And you never know what’s going on with the higher-ups. They just tell you where to go fight and you go fight there. But like World War II, when the war and the misery ended we came home to glory, you know? [laughs] Like one premiere after another and the respect we got from the show was so great, and the Golden Globes, and the Emmys. We’d get dragged up on stage for those, it was really cool. It was nice. It was sort of like you didn’t feel worthy of the celebration and the accolades. But damn, you suffered so hard, you know [laughs] that you kind of enjoy it.
Did you get any feedback from WWII veterans on the finished project?
Yeah, they were happy, you know? They were really happy. The guy I played (2nd Lt. C. Carwood Lipton), he just passed away recently. He was alive during the whole time. I spoke to him every day. I called him every day from England and talked to him. He lived an amazing life. He was very poor when he was young, as most of the guys were, they were children of the Depression. Except for the officers, they were all well-to-do kids who went to West Point and stuff. But after the war, he went to college. He got a great job. And he ended up living in Switzerland for awhile, living in England, living in Spain. Became very wealthy and was flown all over the world to speak, whether it was a military thing or a business thing. He was just a really successful man and had a fantastic life. But I think his last year was his best, you know? They had celebrations all around the country and all around the world that he was able to travel to. His legacy was secured by this project.
How were you originally cast in The Sixth Sense?
I was on my way to Canada and I had a bunch of scripts to read. And I just was like, “Where do I start?” and I picked The Sixth Sense, which according to my memory at the time was a small little independent film. And I’m reading it and I was 10 pages in and I’m like, “This is good!” And 20 pages in, I’m like, “This is real good!” And I keep going back to the cover and I’m like, “Who’s making this movie?” Because I’m thinking if it’s a major movie, what am I reading it for? I can’t play any of these parts, I can’t play the lead for sure. But they told me it was like a 1 million dollar movie. I might have a chance to play this, you know what I mean? [laughs] Maybe some jackass will cast me in it. [laughs] So I kept reading and I arrived in Canada and I finished it that night and I cried. I don’t get that way about screenplays. So I said, “I’ve got to meet this guy. Because there’s no part I can do in this. But I’d like to produce a play of it.” Not in a big Broadway thing, but a small little theater in L.A. I knew how to do it with minimal props and stuff. So that was my plan and I went to meet Night. We talked and we clicked. I think how I was cast in the movie is that I read it, I “got it,” I understood it. So whatever Night and I talked about in the meeting, I “got it.” And I think that’s what attracted him to most of the cast. If you “got it” on the deepest levels, then he felt something. I don’t think he wanted people who just wanted to be hired in a movie. Night said, “How would you feel about playing this part? Would you be interested?” And I said, “Well, it’s written for like a 14-year old.” And he said, “Well, if Bruce Willis does it, he can look 50, so it’s conceivable that if you looked like 25, even 20, he could have been your doctor when you were 10. It is conceivable.” So I said, “Alright.” He called me six months later and said, “We’re ready to go.”
You lost a tremendous amount of weight for the role.
Well, when I re-met Night six months later, I had probably gained about 10 pounds of muscle from working out. I was really big now and really afraid that he would think he made a mistake thinking of me in the first place for this part. But they made an offer. And I think other people didn’t want me to do it. I don’t know that the producers wanted me to do it. And it’s no slight on them. But I think they thought I was wrong for the part. So I got a really small offer and my manager at the time told me to pass and to get more money. I said, “Are you crazy? Why would you give these people an excuse to get the right person for the job? You know, some little skinny kid who looks terrible and who’s really closer to this part.” I said, “No, we’re going to take the offer. We’re going to do it and that’s it.” We did a table read in October. I had five weeks from the table read before I had to shoot. I told Night that I was going to lose a little weight. Night was like “Yeah, okay.” He didn’t seem concerned, he had bigger fish to fry at the time and I was still five weeks away from doing my thing. I remember when I came back five weeks later and he saw me for the first time, he almost didn’t recognize me.
Did you find that once people saw The Sixth Sense you were now on a whole different level in terms of how you were considered for studio projects?
When I went to the premiere, I was totally blown away. I didn’t know what they would use. I was still thinking half of it could end up on the editing room floor. If Bruce Willis was a real selfish guy, which he isn’t, thank God, he could have seen it, thought it was good, and said, “Cut that down. Don’t take away from me.” People do that kind of thing. Not Bruce. He was incredible on every level on that project. At the premiere, I felt like “Wow, okay, maybe I’m stepping up a bit. Maybe this will help me to be considered for different things.” But what happened is, I made a big mistake. Opening night of The Sixth Sense, I was in Boston. It opened on the 6th of August. I decided to go for a midnight showing of the movie. My older brother had already gone to a screening and he told me that when I was onscreen the whole theater was just silent and stunned. He said he cried the whole time, that it was the most incredible thing he had ever seen from any Wahlberg ever in any project. Music or otherwise. And I said, “Wow, I want to feel that.” So I went to the theater at midnight where my house was in Boston. And I walked in and I was sitting in the second to the back row. And there were like six hip-hop kids behind me. Like four black kids, a Puerto Rican kid, and a white kid. They were right behind me, literally. So all of a sudden it reveals me and I’m waiting for that moment of shock in the theater and they all started laughing! And I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe this.” So they’re watching the whole scene, and I’m screaming and yelling at Bruce, and they’re laughing. They see me in the underwear and they just got such a kick out of it. I immediately got up and walked out of the theater and said, “People are going to be laughing all around the country at that part.” I thought that was going to be par for the course. So for the next five or six months, all I got was incredible feedback but I never really believed it. Producers would come up to me, directors, everybody wanted to meet with me. And I didn’t believe it. People on the street, I can’t tell you how many times people have approached me about that movie. Thousands. Unbelievable. They all said the same thing, “I didn’t even know that was you, man. I had to see it twice.” Those guys owe me money [laughs] because if everybody who said they saw it twice really did because of me, to find out if it was really me, it’d be a lot of money. You wonder why that movie made so much money! [laughs] So I never took the compliments. It must have just been a blessing in disguise. It must’ve just been God’s way to keep my head on straight, to send me in the theater with those 6 kids to let them laugh at me the whole time, so that when the thousands of other people said great things it wouldn’t affect me. Or make me overconfident and cocky. Because I could never accept anyone’s compliments. I would always think about those 6 kids. I mean, I would take the compliments, but it would be measured. But it did help [in terms of career]. Most of all, it helped with other actors. At that point, other actors stopped looking me as some music person who was trying to act and they said, “Okay, he’s an actor.” I did an awards show, for the Casting Society of America, not long after that and James Woods was the M.C. We sat on the dais and he introduced me. It was the most incredible introduction and it was all about the performance in The Sixth Sense. That was the most important thing to me, the actors’ reaction to it. Because when you do something like Band of Brothers, you don’t want to be the music guy. I don’t want to be the music guy walking into Band of Brothers with all those young actors, thinking I’m taking food off of one of their best friend’s plates who didn’t get the part. So when I walked in to Band of Brothers, they didn’t look at me as “that guy from New Kids on the Block.” They looked at me as “that guy from The Sixth Sense.” That’s invaluable. I can’t even define how wonderful that feeling was.
Terry here - I've been waiting for this film adaptation of the world's greatest graphic novel since I was 18, and that was, um, some time ago. My obsession with seeing WATCHMEN adapted got to the point that I nearly made a cheapo version of it on 16 mm in college. Anyway, this little version from Zack Snyder looks like it might have been worth the wait.
I really am so jazzed that this is finally hitting the big screen, even if I had nothing to do with it. Enjoy! I will be watching the Watchmen. I think the whole world will be.
In 1971, the Bay Area city of San Leandro was regarded as one of the most racist suburbs in America, to the point that Congressional hearings were actually held about it. The next year, 8-year old African-American Brian Copeland moved there with his family. That experience forms the spine of “Not a Genuine Black Man,” Copeland’s one-man show which returns to the Hudson Theater tonight for a limited run. The longest-running one-man show in San Francisco history, “Not a Genuine Black Man” previously played to sold-out houses nightly in Los Angeles in 2006, following a lengthy Off-Broadway run. The remaining performances in Los Angeles, at the Hudson Theater, are tonight, and then on November 18, 19, 25, & 26. Tickets can be obtained at Plays411.com. The Hudson Theater can also be reached by phone at 323-856-4200. It is located at 6539 Santa Monica Blvd. in Los Angeles.
Copeland is also a successful comic, who has opened for the likes of Donna Summer and Aretha Franklin. He hosts his own weekly radio program, "The Brian Copeland Show", on ABC radio affiliate KGO. His print adaptation of “Not a Genuine Black Man: My Life as an Outsider” recently came out in paperback and can be purchased here through Amazon.
As you industry folks who read these pages may have guessed, Copeland’s show is also a natural for adaptation to television, and that process is well underway.
You’ve been doing "Not a Genuine Black Man" for a few years now. Has the show changed at all during that time due to current events or events in your personal life?
Brian Copeland: Not really. I see it as a play, and so, I’m going to be leaving it as it is now. When I first started with the show, I did hone it, and workshop it, and I finally got it to where I wanted it. Then we did 100 performances Off-Broadway and we did, in fact, do some changes there. But then I put it back the way it was, prior to Off-Broadway, when I brought it back to California. See, I had received the greatest review in the history of the Los Angeles Times, and I didn’t want to be reviewed ever again [laughs].
Let’s go back a bit then and talk about the origins of “Not a Genuine Black Man.”
And you’ve also been working to develop a version of the show for television. Tell us some more about that.
Well, I actually videotaped the show after we were up and running and sent it to Carl Reiner. He said, “This is amazing. You know who should see this? Robby.” And I thought, “Robby Who? Oh, that Robby!” [laughs] Rob Reiner and I were both with the same agency and they sent it to him. He watched it as soon as he received it, and he so got it and where we are in regards to race in America, at the dawn of this new century. Nobody has really had these kinds of discussions about race on television. There are either caricatures or race just isn’t mentioned. On "The Cosby Show", it was never mentioned. We developed the show at Castle Rock, and we had a deal with HBO set up for a series. But enough of my voice didn’t really come through in the show, and I think the format was wrong. The play bounces back between two time periods and we tried to do it as a literal translation. Now I’m working [on an adaptation] with a new writing partner. Although Rob isn’t attached as a producer, he’s been exceedingly supportive. He put me in The Bucket List as well, and he’s hosting the big industry night in L.A. for the 12th. He is such a nice man to do that for me. With the new version, it’s going to be a lot edgier. Barack Obama has asked for a national discussion on race in America and this is part of that. This show is about the black kid in your class, and you all had one. How did he live and how did he survive? You know, when I was doing this Off-Broadway, my biggest audience were actually Holocaust survivors. People would come up to me with tears in their eyes and tell me about the Holocaust. And I finally asked someone why so many survivors were coming to the show. That person said, “Because we walk in a world full of people, but we are all alone.” It’s that aspect of isolation.
Something I wanted to talk about is that when I was creating this show, the rhythms that inspired me were from the Norman Lear shows of the 70s. You’d watch Maude and All in the Family and Good Times, and what was amazing about those shows was…it was really funny and then Edith got raped! I wanted those moments where you’re laughing hysterically and then you’re kicked in the gut. I want to do a Norman Lear show today the way he would if he didn’t have the restraints he was working with, so that we can explore the issues of what divides us and what unites us.
Your paperback is now read in a number of high schools and colleges across the country.
People will send me term papers comparing and contrasting me with Malcolm X [laughs]. I’m a comic, for God’s sake!
Below is a talk that Brian did on "Not a Genuine Black Man" at Google Headquarters. More information on Brian Copeland can be found at his website athttp://www.briancopeland.com/.
Dennis Hopper: actor, artist, filmmaker, Hollywood survivor.
DENNIS HOPPER IS RIDING EASY By Alex Simon
Editor's Note: This article appears in the November issue of Venice Magazine.
The Hollywood landscape is littered with tragedies, broken promise and self-destruction. Many promising artists stumble once and never recover from that initial fall. In the history of American film, there has never been a phoenix-like story of survival and rebirth quite like that of Dennis Hopper, who has gone from Warner Bros. contract player in his late teens, to Hollywood outcast, to renowned artist, photographer and art collector, to the man who brought independent cinema into the mainstream with Easy Rider, to being outcast again and nearly destroyed during a period of heavy drug and alcohol abuse. There are single incidents of self-destruction in Dennis Hopper’s life that most human beings could never walk away from in one piece, and by his own admission, Hopper repeated these incidents dozens of times over decades, until getting sober for good in 1985.
Hopper has also had a Zelig-like ability to have been surrounded by some of the film, art and political world’s most significant players: James Dean, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Martin Luther King, Marlon Brando, John Wayne, Miles Davis, and dozens of other legendary names that could fill every page of this blog and turn it into a history book. Few Hollywood players have led as rich, and varied a life as that of Dennis Lee Hopper, who was born May 17, 1936 in Dodge City, Kansas. Hopper has appeared in 200 films and television productions since 1955, with 2008 showcasing “Dennis the Menace,” as he was nicknamed in his enfant terrible days, in no less than eight feature films, the best being Isabel Coixet’s superb Elegy, with Hopper in a masterful turn as Sir Ben Kingsley’s best friend and confidant, and the lead in the Starz network’s first original series, Crash, based on Paul Haggis’ Oscar-winning film, telling a tableaux of tales about the disparate denizens of Los Angeles. Hopper scores big again with his manic portrait of a legendary record producer who seems to be constantly teetering on the precipice of madness or epiphany.
A long-time Venice resident, Dennis Hopper has been named one of the top 100 collectors of modern art in the world, and was recently honored by the Cinematheque Francais in Paris with a retrospective of his work. Mr. Hopper sat down with Venice Senior Editor Alex Simon recently over a cigar, and discussed his life as Hollywood’s greatest survivor. Read on…
You’ve had a busy year. Let’s start by talking about Crash. Dennis Hopper: I had just gotten back from the Cannes Film Festival, and my agent called and asked if I’d like to do a TV series. They said it was an incredible part and based on the film Crash, which won all the Academy Awards. The kicker was I had two days to decide! (laughs) But I’m glad I did it. It’s been a lot of fun and we’re working very hard: sometimes working sixteen hour days, but nobody’s complaining because the scripts are so good. We have no restrictions in terms of what we can say or do, and in many ways we have more freedom than we would on film, because we had a commitment for thirteen episodes. Then two days after I shot the first episode, I was in France where the cinematheque in Paris had spent three and a half years working on a retrospective of my work and some of my art collection and took the fifth floor of the Frank Gehry building, where the cinematheque is located and built this virtual reality installation with twenty different screens that showed all the films I’d made, commercials I’d done, experimental films I’d made with Andy Warhol and Bruce Conner. It covered my entire career up till now, and it was really amazing.
Every time I’ve been in Paris, Easy Rider seems to be playing somewhere. Yeah, it played in one theater on the Left Bank for twenty years. It was a very narrow, long little theater. I kept seeing this woman who grew older and older over the years at all these film festivals. She’d walk up to me and say “It’s still playing!” (laughs) I felt like a jazz musician in France, when jazz went sour in the States, the Europeans all sort of took over the jazz movement. I guess if you’re a big enough failure, they really take you to heart! (laughs)
Hopper as Billy in Easy Rider.
You really do have the greatest Hollywood survival story, ever. Yeah, and this is not a place where you want to try and survive. (laughs)
Well, one could argue that Hollywood is a living metaphor for social Darwinism at its most twisted. True, very true.
Watching your character in the first episode of Crash, I thought to myself ‘So Frank Booth survived the gunshot to the head in Blue Velvet and became a record producer.’ (laughs) Yeah, right!
Who else would call someone an “eyeless fuck” but Frank Booth? (laughs) Yeah, yeah. My first conversation with my penis in the limo with the young woman driver, it’s pretty hairy. When I hire the new driver, who’s black, and say “Gorillas in the mist, that’s what the LAPD call you,” he has no stop switch, my character. He says everything and insults everybody. He just goes for it.
Which at one time could have described you. Yeah, probably. I guess so. It was so long ago now, I can’t remember. (laughs) Phil Spector and I had an office together for ten years, and people have asked me if I’m doing Phil Spector in this and I said ‘No. I’m doing me!’ (laughs) The office was right up on Sunset before you go into Beverly Hills. David Geffen was in there for a while, too.
I know you’ve done TV work before, going back to its infancy in the 1950s. How is working in TV a different process from doing a film, or is it? Well, you have more time to develop a character, first of all. Instead of an hour and a half, you have thirteen hours, in this instance. Doing regular television you have lots of restrictions, but doing cable you have no restrictions and can push the envelope a lot farther. That said, you have more time to do a feature than you do a television series itself, because we’re constantly under the gun, working twice a week with sixteen hour days. I have so much dialogue, though. I have all these speeches to memorize which really, if you look at them, mean nothing at all! (laughs) They’re just these stream-of-consciousness rants. I’m like a little kid sitting in the corner memorizing this stuff all day and all night. We’re shooting it all in Albuquerque because (Governor) Bill Richardson is giving us such a good deal to film there. There’s probably more movies being shot in New Mexico than anywhere else in the States. It’s a drag because I have to leave my family, but the work is good.
Hopper and Sir Ben Kingsley in Isabel Coixet's Elegy.
You also have a terrific part in one of the year’s best films, Isabel Coixet’s Elegy. That’s a brilliant film. I hope they get some awards so they’ll mass distribute it. Penelope Cruz gives one of the best female performances I’ve ever seen. I’m very proud to have been part of that.
How was working with Sir Ben Kingsley? Sir Ben is great, man. All my scenes were with him, really. He’s so comfortable to be with. He’s such a good actor, you could just play moment-to-moment reality with him all day long. It’s a pleasure to work with an actor who’s that good. I had a ball with him, and he’s very funny. He just gives and never pushes and is really there for you, has a great rhythm.
Let’s start at the beginning: you were born in Kansas. Dodge City, Kansas, 1936, which makes me seventy-two years-old. A guy who never thought he’d live to be thirty, who had a real shock when he made it to thirty-one.
Is there a secret to being a survivor? Does it come down to genetics, to luck, to having a specific outlook? I think it’s probably a combination of all three. I had such a bad drinking problem, and it took a lot to get me sober.
And you knew from a young age that you liked mind-altering experiences. I remember hearing you tell a story about snorting gasoline from your grandfather’s truck… Yeah, and I looked up at the clouds and saw clowns, until I ODed on the fumes and smashed up his truck with a baseball bat, thinking it was a monster, smashing out the lights. (laughs) I was about seven. (laughs) Not good, but that was the end of my gas-sniffing.
What did your parents do? My father served in the OSS during World War II and came back and went to work for the railway mail. So we moved from Dodge City when I was nine, and moved to Kansas City, where I lived until I was thirteen, then we moved to San Diego. My father ended up managing the San Diego post office, and my mother, who had managed one of the largest outdoor swimming pools in the country—she was the backstroke champion of Kansas, and was on her way to the Olympics when she became pregnant with me—and then she managed a swimming pool in a suburb of San Diego called El Cajon. I started acting at The Old Globe Theater in San Diego when I was thirteen.
When did you know you were an actor? I wanted to be an actor from the time I saw my first films, which I think were singing cowboy pictures like Roy Rogers.
What else do you remember about that time? It was the dustbowl, so I had to wear a gas mask to school five days a week, and my grandmother would open the door and five inches of dust would blow inside. There were bread lines and soup lines, and it was really bad. The whole middle of the country had blown away. My grandmother used to fill her apron full of eggs and we’d go into town. She’d sell the eggs and we’d go to the movies, while my grandfather would be out working on his wheat farm. I got my first Sheep Dog from the Clutters, the family that was murdered years later that Capote wrote about in “In Cold Blood.” When I was eighteen years-old I came to Los Angeles, went under contract to Warner Bros. and did Rebel Without a Cause, my second movie.
Hopper, second from left, in Rebel Without a Cause, his film debut.
I know both Nicholas Ray and James Dean were profound influences on you. Yeah, Dean made a real impression on me. I thought I was the best young actor around, and then I saw him. I’d never seen anybody improvise before. I’d always been doing Shakespeare and other plays where everything was a preconceived idea, preconceived gestures, how I said a line…and here he was differently every scene, adding things to the script. It was really confusing to me, initially. I grabbed him one night, and said ‘What are you doing?’ And we talked for a while, and I asked ‘Should I go back and study with (Lee) Strasberg?’ He said “No, no, no. Just start doing things, but don’t show them. Don’t indicate, or presuppose what you’re going to do. Live in moment-to-moment reality. Instead of playing drinking your coffee, just drink your coffee. Just smoke your cigar, don’t play smoking the cigar. You’ll find the simplest things become very difficult the first time you get onstage or in front of the camera, but eventually you’ll get through all that. Just live in the moment.” So that was the beginning of it. We did Giant together next, and he used to watch me on that picture and critique me afterward. When his character got older, he started asking me to watch him in those scenes and to tell him if I thought he seemed old. That was basically our relationship. We weren’t great buddies who went out drinking or anything like that. He was five years older than me. That was quite an age difference at that point. Also, we thought of him as a kid because he’d done Rebel, but in point of fact, he was older than Elizabeth Taylor, who was considered an “adult.”
Didn’t he also encourage you to pursue photography? No, but he saw me taking pictures and said “If you’re going to take pictures, don’t crop them.” I said ‘Why not?’ He said “Because you’re probably going to want to direct films someday, and you can’t crop film, so learn how to frame full-frame, full negative.” So from that day on, I didn’t crop my photographs.
Had Dean lived, would he have survived the ‘60s? Oh yeah, I mean he was…first of all, Paul Newman, who was a good friend of mine and a great man, had made a film called The Silver Chalice which Paul took out an ad apologizing for, because it was so terrible, the two parts that made Paul a star: Somebody Up There Likes Me and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, had both been cast with James Dean before he died.
Do you know the book “Suspects” by the film critic and historian David Thomson? No.
He takes famous movie characters and tells you what happened to them after the credits rolled. He did a similar piece on what happened after James Dean “survived” his car crash, with one of the punch lines being that Paul Newman kept losing parts to him and eventually moved back to Cleveland, where he became a successful car dealer. (laughs) That’s so cool! Wow…
What are some of your memories of Mr. Newman? Well, I’d been friends with Paul since I was eighteen years old. When they lived out here in California, he and Joanne (Woodward), I’d be at their house a couple times a week, then when they moved back East, we lost touch for a little while, but there was a five year period where I was with them every week. He was a terrific guy, very generous with all his charity work, and just had a huge heart, from day one. He was one of the most unselfish people I’ve ever known.
Hopper, bottom left, with Paul Newman, George Kennedy, Harry Dean Stanton, and many other actors who would go onto fame in the egg-eating sequence of Cool Hand Luke.
The two of you were in Cool Hand Luke which, like Rebel, had a who’s-who of young talent that went onto bigger things. Stuart Rosenberg directed that, his first feature, and he’d had us all in various television shows he’d directed for years. I’d starred in about five different shows he’d directed. I don’t think I had one line of dialogue in that whole picture. I had some interesting physical business I did. Babalugats was the character’s name. I just sort of mumbled a lot. (laughs)
What was the atmosphere like on the set? I’ve heard that you all became pretty tight. We did. We shot it all up in Stockton, California. We wore our chains and prison clothes all night. We’d go to sleep in this motel with our chains on, go into the restaurant and this little nightclub there, and we’d all be in our chains. (laughs) If a lady wanted to dance with a “prisoner” she could. (laughs) It was a fun shoot. Rosenberg was always fun to work with.
Director Nicholas Ray confers with James Dean on the set of Rebel Without a Cause.
And back to Rebel. What about Nicholas Ray? Well Nick and I had a long, long relationship. He came and lived with me for a while. He showed up at the Cannes Film Festival when I was showing Easy Rider and asked to borrow $500, which I didn’t have at the time. He said “C’mon, you can get $500.” I said “I’ve been sleeping on the floor of a borrowed pool house for the last year editing this movie, being paid $140 dollars a month. I don’t have any money.” He said “Well go to (Bert) Schneider and ask for the money.” So I went to Schneider and borrowed the money and gave it to Nick, who came back an hour later and said “I need another 500.” I said ‘What you talking about?’ He said “I lost it in the casino across the street.” So he ended up living at my house in Taos, New Mexico for about six months, until I got him a job teaching. He ran up a phone bill that was unbelievable, looking for Howard Hughes to convince him to back his next movie. But during Rebel Nick was very open to what were then, in the ‘50s, very new techniques of acting.
You became one of the first collectors of pop art. When did you first discover Warhol, Lichtenstein, Ruscha and the pop art movement? I met a lot of the key figures at a place called Stone Brothers Printers, which was a place where they made mailers and did a magazine called Semina, which Wallace Berman put out. There was an old Chinese man named Mr. Chang who would dress in a Confederate General’s uniform and perform Shakespeare, very badly, in a heavy Chinese accent out on Hollywood Boulevard, and would put his hat out. James Dean was a big fan of this guy, and would throw quarters at him. (laughs) He was having a poetry reading at Stone Brothers, so we went there, and that night I met Walter Hopps and later he and Ed Kienholz started The Ferus Gallery on La Cienega, which is where Andy Warhol had his first show, and he then went to the Pasadena Museum where he gave Marcel Duchamp his first retrospective in 1963. So, in 1962 everybody was talking about “the return to reality.” I was a third generation abstract expressionist, which we all were, really. We were looking at a lot of the Bay Area painters, but really felt that they were just rehashing a lot of the old stuff, it wasn’t a return to reality. It was nothing new. I walked into the Ferus Gallery one day, and Irving Blum, who was running the gallery said “Dennis, I want to show you something.” He showed me two slides, one of which was of a soup can, and the other was a cartoon. It was Andy and Roy Lichtenstein. I went crazy, started jumping up and down and said ‘That’s it! That’s it!’ Irving said “That’s what?” I said ‘That’s the return to reality!’ Irving said “What are you doing tomorrow?” So we went to New York the next day, went to Andy Warhol’s studio, and met Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, I saw the whole thing. That was it. I bought a Roy Lichtenstein called “Sinking Sun” for $1100, which I later lost in a divorce. A year and a half ago it sold for $17,870,000. I bought one of Andy’s soup cans out here and I’ve been collecting since. That was a very exciting time in Los Angeles, in the early ‘60s, and that’s when I had my first shows.
Andy Warhol's 1971 portrait of Hopper.
It’s interesting, because I think most people view pop art as an East Coast movement, not that it was born here. Yeah, and all the East Coast guys came out here for the Duchamp retrospective. We were all so backward; we had a great thing to fight against: around 1965, the Los Angeles County Museum, one of the curators bought a Jackson Pollock. The board of directors got together and were furious, and refused to show it in the main museum, calling it “Communist propaganda.”
Where the hell did they get that? Who knows? That’s how backward we were! Then Kienholtz did “Backseat Dodge” which was this sculpture made out of wire, of two people that looked like they might be making it in the back seat, and they closed down the whole L.A. County Museum because of this. Around the same time, the LAPD came in and busted Wallace Berman’s show at The Ferus Gallery and destroyed all his pieces out in the alley because he had a nude picture of his wife on display. But it was a great thing if you were an artist to be sort of underground.
Hopper's 1961 photograph "Double Standard."
When you paint a picture, or shoot a photograph, is it a different process from when you act, or are you tapping into the same vein? I think they’re all different disciplines, but working with Strasberg, we worked with our senses, and brought back emotional recall and so forth. So I think you work with the same instrument, and just apply it to different disciplines. I was born in Dodge City, Kansas and am really just a middle class farm boy at heart. I really thought acting, painting, music, writing were all part of being an artist. I never thought of them as being separate. I could never play music, but I’d always loved music, and I tried to apply that. Easy Rider was the first film to use “found” music that was popular at the time. Prior to that, most movies were scored with an orchestra. Colors was the first million-selling rap album, and I produced Miles Davis’ last album for The Hot Spot. When I went under contract to Warner Bros., it allowed me to have a cultural life, instead of having to get a “normal” job bussing tables, or putting on a suit and tie and going into the office. I just never stopped painting, taking photographs, writing. There was no pressure to “put that childish stuff away.” It allowed me to continue to be a child.
Hopper with then-wife, actress Daria Halprin, in Taos, circa 1971.
You had a seminal experience with the director Henry Hathaway on a picture called From Hell to Texas. (laughs) Yeah, that was in 1958, with Don Murray, Diane Varsi and Chill Wills. I got into a lot of trouble on that. I was loaned out from Warner Bros. to Fox, and I didn’t want to do the part, but Hathaway kept insisting. We had the most wonderful dinners, just a delightful, wonderful guy at dinner, and a screaming, yelling maniac on the set. (laughs) But I ended up working for him more than any other director, did three films for him by the end.
Director Henry Hathaway, Hopper's nemesis and reluctant mentor.
But he was the antithesis of what you responded to: an old-school director who carried a riding crop. Yeah, yeah, and he’d tell you exactly where to move, how to walk, how to talk. He’d give you line readings. I was now trying to “live in the moment” and doing things without preconceived ideas, and I walked off the picture three times on location. He’d beg me to come back, and we’d have a wonderful dinner where he’d be utterly charming and I’d say ‘Mr. Hathaway, tomorrow I’d like to try the scene this way.” And he’d say “Sure, sure kid. Whatever you say.” And the next day on the set, he’d be screaming and yelling again, and I’d say ‘Mr. Hathaway, last night at dinner, you said I could try this.’ He’d scream “That was just dinner talk, kid, dinner talk! We’re makin’ a movie here, now get the fuck over there and hit your mark and say your lines like I tell ya!” (laughs) If you really wanted to drive him crazy, you’d put a paper cup in the scene: “Paper cup in a fuckin’ western! They didn’t have fuckin’ paper cups in the old west, goddammit!” So the last day on the picture, I came on the set at 20th Century Fox, and he said “Hey, good morning. See that over there? Know what those are?” I said ‘Well, those are stacks of film cans, Henry.’ He said “That’s right. I’ve got enough film there to shoot for four and a half months. Did you know that I owned 40% of 20th Century Fox?” ‘No, I didn’t know that, Henry.’ “Well, I do. See that over there?” ‘Yeah, those are sleeping bags.’ “That’s right. We’re gonna do this scene till you do it my way,” and it was a ten line scene, “and we’ll send out for lunch, for dinner, we’ll sleep here for four and a half months, then we’ll send out for more!” So we started about eight o’clock in the morning. Around eleven at night, after 85 takes, I finally cracked, and said ‘Okay, tell me what you want to do.’ I did it, then I walked out. It wasn’t like somebody sent a black ball around after that, but word got around that I wasn’t somebody you wanted to work with. Soon after that, I was dropped from my contract at Warner Bros.. I went back to New York and I studied with Strasberg for five years. I didn’t have another major role in a studio picture for nearly ten years, until Hathaway hired me again for The Sons of Katie Elder in ’65.
Around the same time, you cut your teeth directing for Roger Corman, directing second unit on The Trip. What was it like stepping behind the camera for the first time? Well, Roger was the kind of guy who wouldn’t give us any money, but would let us take cameras and equipment out on the weekends and shoot. Jack Nicholson had written the screenplay for that picture, and it was a wonderful screenplay. The stuff on Sunset Boulevard, and the acid trip and the stuff in the desert was all stuff that I shot, because we didn’t feel that Roger would have the inclination to shoot that stuff, so we did it all on weekends.
You got to work with some of the great directors throughout your career, from day one. Who are some of your greatest influences behind the camera? I’d say George Stevens, and Henry Hathaway, strangely enough. (laughs) Even though I fought with him a lot, he had a great leanness to his work. Nick Ray, on Rebel, was a big influence, just watching him allow Dean to do what he did on that film. I’ve worked with so many top directors, John Sturges was another great one. You learn something from everyone, even if they’re terrible directors. A lot of directing is really like being a floor manager of a department store, where you’re just managing all these different divisions, and time is your worst enemy.
I heard that during the filming of True Grit that John Wayne chased you around Paramount with a loaded gun? (laughs) No, that’s not quite how it happened. He used to arrive on the lot via helicopter from his mine sweeper that he had moored in Newport Beach. He’d have a .45 strapped on his side, wearing army fatigues, and that’s the way he’d arrive to work every day. This one day he arrived, and he wanted to know where “that Pinko Hopper was hiding.” I was actually in Glen Campbell’s trailer, hiding from him. He was screaming “My daughter was out at UCLA last night and heard (Black Panther) Eldridge Cleaver cussing, and I know he must be a friend of that Pinko Hopper! Where is he? I want to talk to him!” So he wasn’t literally running around with a gun looking for me. He was walking around with a gun at his hip, but I think he wanted to have a political discussion, as opposed to committing actual manslaughter! (laughs) Anyway, nothing ever came of it. That was just Duke.
The legendary opening sequence of Easy Rider.
Let’s talk about how Easy Rider was born. Peter Fonda and I were doing motorcycle movies: I did one called The Glory Stompers and Peter did one called The Wild Angels. Jack Nicholson did one called Hell’s Angels on Wheels, all at American International Pictures. Peter had read I thing I wrote with Stewart Stern called The Last Movie, and I’d wanted to make it as my first film. Peter loved it and went around trying to raise money to make it, but wasn’t successful. We’d promised each other that if we were going to do a movie, that it wasn’t going to be a motorcycle movie. So we wrote a screenplay together with a standup comic named Don Sherman called The Yin and the Yang, a comedy, and we couldn’t find financing for that, either. Around three o’clock in the morning, Peter called me. He was up in Toronto promoting The Trip at the film festival up there. So Peter says that he’s just talked with James Nicholson, no relation to Jack, and Sam Arkoff, who ran AIP, and I told them this idea for a movie: these two guys sell a bunch of marijuana in Mexico, then buy these two beautiful, gleaming bikes and ride cross-country to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, where they have a great time, then they go into Florida to retire, and are shot by a couple of duck hunters. Peter says “They said we could both act in it, and you could direct. What do you think?” (laughs) I said ‘They actually said they’d give you money for that?’ “Yeah.” So I said ‘Terrific, man. If they really said they’d give you the money, it sounds great to me.’ So that’s how it started. Then when it came time to really do it, they pulled back and said I could act or direct, but not both. So we went to see Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, because they’d just finished doing The Monkees and our friend Michael McClure, a poet from San Francisco, he had a project called The Queens he wanted to do which was a satire about LBJ and Dean Rusk, and all these powerful Washington insiders dressed in drag, eating live lobsters, talking about how they assassinated President Kennedy. It was going to be a 20 minute short. We decided to pitch it to Rafelson and Schneider, Peter couldn’t help but talk about what was then called The Loners, and by then we had a full outline. Schneider left the room, the Rafelson left, who came back and said “Can I see you in my office?” So we went in and he said “Call Schneider at home tonight. I think he’s going to give you the money and let you act in it and direct it.” And Schneider said “Yeah, it’s a go.”
And it was groundbreaking on so many levels: the first movie to really address the counterculture seriously, not in an exploitative way. The first to show people openly using drugs. The first to show some of the serious social problems that were happening in the country, particularly in the Deep South, where you actually shot some of it. Yeah, and like I said before, it was the first time found music was ever used. At that time it was so much cheaper. All I had to do was go the artist and ask their permission to use the music.
So was the decision one that was based more on economics than on creativity? No. I went out and shot the movie in five and a half weeks. Laszlo Kovacs said it was the best-organized picture he’d ever shot. When we spoke at AFI a few years before he died, he said “People talk about how crazy the shoot was, but there was nothing crazy about that shoot.” The thing was, after shooting the film I came back to eighty hours of footage that I hadn’t seen, because in those days there was no way for me to see my dailies out on the road. I had an editing job that was just horrendous, took me over a year. And driving on the way to the studio to cut the picture, I’d hear all this great music on the radio: Steppenwolf, Jimi Hendrix, The Byrds. I heard all these songs and cut the picture to picture, and not to sound. Then when I put in a song like “Born to be Wild” it just fit perfectly. But when you see the movie, the story is told through the music, not the dialogue. It was just one of those things that worked.
Has MTV ever acknowledged you of being an early inventor of music video? (laughs) No, I don’t think so.
Easy Rider changed Hollywood. Yeah, it certainly showed them that they could make independent films. You had to get an I.A. union stamp on your film to get released in those days, and we didn’t have that stamp. Bert Schneider’s father Abe was Chairman of Columbia Pictures and paid off the unions, gave them $25,000 so we could release the movie, which broke the code, and other studios saw that they could do the same thing: make a non-union film and then make a deal with the union to distribute it. Cassavetes was really the only person in the U.S. who’d been making independent films up to that point, because he was a from a well-to-do Greek shipping family that allowed him to finance his own low budget films. But he could never really get them distributed, because the majors wouldn’t distribute them.
I read a quote attributed to you, and maybe you can tell me if it’s accurate: “There are moments that I've had some real brilliance, you know. But I think they are moments. And sometimes, in a career, moments are enough. I never felt I played the great part. I never felt that I directed the great movie. And I can't say that it's anybody's fault but my own.” Well, I could agree with everything but the last part. It wasn’t all my fault.
Hopper on the cover of Rolling Stone issue 56, April 16, 1970.
You don’t feel that Easy Rider is a great film? I do. I do, but after that I should have made another great movie and Colors is an alright film, but I don’t know, I just never felt I directed the film I really wanted to direct after Easy Rider. I know I never did. But I don’t think it was my fault that I wasn’t allowed to. I had a lot of help on this end. It may have been my behavior that caused the rift to happen, but once it happened, it wasn’t my fault. I could’ve brought them a ship full of gold, and they wouldn’t have let me direct a picture after my fallout with Lew Wasserman over The Last Movie. He wanted me to re-edit it after The Venice Film Festival. I had final cut and said ‘no.’ He said “Then it will never be distributed.”
Let’s talk about Apocalypse Now. What are some of your memories of being in the Philippines doing that? I was there for four or five months. When I arrived I was signed to play a CIA agent. There was no script. So I started out in a clean uniform being told by Francis (Coppola) that I was going to be second-in-charge to Marlon Brando’s army he had in the jungle. I was with these guys about three weeks and we were training with these Green Beret guys who’d just gotten out of Vietnam, playing war games. We had mortars that we’d play with that were full of powder, and if you got any of the powder on you, that meant you were dead. We had all these war toys we’d play with at night. We’d be assigned to hold a bridge. Would they be coming by the sea? Would they be coming through the jungle. We’d play these incredible war games and just had a ball. Finally Marlon arrived and everything was shut down for a week because he realized Marlon hadn’t read “Heart of Darkness,” so Francis went out to read Marlon “Heart of Darkness” and 900 people, the cast and crew, just sat and waited! (laughs) We called it “the million dollar week” because Marlon was getting paid a million dollars a week. When he came back he said “Marlon and I agreed that your part should be as large as his, or maybe larger.” When you read “Heart of Darkness” you never actually see the Kurtz character, you only hear about him being talked about by this Russian-Jewish trader, who comes out with shrunken heads and thinks he’s such a great man. So Francis wanted me to play that part, and made him a photojournalist who carried a lot of cameras instead of shrunken heads. So we started there, and wrote a little bit in the morning and then would just improvise off of that.
So those scenes between you and Martin Sheen, when he was locked in the bamboo cage, were largely improvised? Yeah. I mean, it was improv that came out of writing.
Hopper, Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now.
And you and Brando were never actually on the set together, right? Yeah, he’d shoot one night, then I’d do another. I came in one night and Francis said “Marlon called you a ‘sniveling dog’ and threw bananas at you.’ So I had this prop man throwing bananas at me all night long. (laughs) And that’s how we worked for a couple weeks. It was Marlon’s decision for us to work separately and at the time, I was sort of offended by it, but looking back, I think Marlon did me a big favor. If you’re improvising something, and he suddenly started reading “Hollow Man” by D.H. Lawrence, you really can’t get something going if you have two people vying for (the director’s) time. In the end, it worked out really well.
In 1986 you had a renaissance in your career with three amazing movies: River’s Edge, Blue Velvet and Hoosiers, the last of which earned you an Oscar nomination. It marked a real comeback in your career, and you haven’t stopped working since. That was my first year of sobriety, too. I’d been out of rehab like two months when I went into do Blue Velvet, then I went straight to Indiana and did Hoosiers. I didn’t do anything but get a haircut and put on some different wardrobe, then came back to Los Angeles and did River’s Edge. It’s funny because I play a drug addict in one, an alcoholic in the other, and a drug dealer in the third! (laughs) So my first year of sobriety was a test. (laughs)
Hopper as the evil Frank Booth, with Isabella Rossellini in David Lynch's Blue Velvet.
We have to talk about the character of Frank Booth in Blue Velvet. I read an interview with David Lynch where he said you called him after reading the script and said “David, you have to let me play this part because I am Frank Booth.” Well actually, he’d already cast me, but I did call him after he’d cast me, and we’d never met at that point, and said ‘You haven’t made a mistake, because I am Frank Booth.” So supposedly he went back to the table with Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini and Laura Dern, they were all having lunch together, and said “I just got off the phone with Dennis Hopper, and he said that he was Frank Booth, which I guess is really good for the picture, but I don’t know how we’ll ever have lunch with him.” (laughs)
How were you Frank Booth? I’d come out of a heavy drug life, and had known a lot of people like Frank. I didn’t mean that I was literally Frank Booth, but I’d certainly run into characters like Frank, and understood him. A big discrepancy came the first day we were shooting the big scene where Kyle is hiding in the closet and I come in demanding my bourbon and tell Isabella to spread her legs, and then this sort of horrendous rape scene occurs against her. None of us had met at this point and that was our first scene. (laughs) David had helium on the set, because in the script, the tank that Frank was constantly taking hits from was written as helium, which makes your voice really high, like Donald Duck. But it doesn’t disorient you in any way, it just makes you talk funny. So I said to David, ‘You know I always thought of this as being nitrous oxide or amyl nitrate or something.’ He said “What is that?” I said “Something that disorients your mind for a few minutes. I’m also having trouble acting with my voice sounding like this. So could I just show you what it would look like with the other stuff?” And I did, and David said “Oh, that’s great!” So we went with that, and I said ‘If you want to put the (helium) voice in later, in post, we can,’ and of course, we didn’t’. So that was the only real contribution I made to that film, I guess. (laughs) David had written a great screenplay, and there wasn’t any reason to change anything else. Years later I was sitting, thinking about it, and I thought how really weird it would be if Frank Booth had only used the gas to change the sound of his voice, that it didn’t affect his mind at all, and what a cold, calculating kind of guy that would be. The Observer, in England, and Film Quarterly gave me an award in Paris as the outstanding villain of all-time for that film, which is pretty heavy, because that means I beat out Sir Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast and Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. (laughs)
Hopper and Christopher Walken in the legendary "eggplant" scene from True Romance.
Which brings us to True Romance and the scene between you and Christopher Walken, which has gone down as one of the great scenes in movie history. At the time, Quentin Tarantino was unknown. Did you know upon reading the script that a completely original voice had arrived? Oh yeah, that was apparent immediately. I thought it was a terrific script and terrific movie, and it just died at the box office. All the buzz came out of tape and DVD. It was strange because I never saw it with an audience where it didn’t get a standing ovation at the end, at Toronto and other places. It just didn’t connect with mainstream audiences. Maybe it was the title, who knows? It’s such a great, popcorn eating movie, you know? (laughs) Tony Scott is a terrific director. The day we did that scene, we did the whole interior of my trailer here at the studio in Los Angeles. First of all, you don’t see speeches like this as an actor in film anymore. It was just pages and pages of this great dialogue. Tony started lighting, was going to shoot with two cameras, and was going to shoot Chris Walken first. Chris came in and saw it, and Tony approached me and said “Chris just said he didn’t want to go first. Would you mind going first?” I said ‘I don’t mind going first, but you’ve been lighting for two and a half hours, man!’ (laughs) Tony said he didn’t mind, and reversed all the lighting and went on me first, and that’s how we did it and it was just wonderful. The only improvisation in the whole thing, because Tarantino’s script was so good, was the bit about the eggplant and the cantaloupe. Walken and I went out later, selling the piece as a team. And someone said to us “Oh, you guys are great actors!” And Walken says “I don’t know if we’re great actors or not, but I started out as a dancer, and Hopper and I partner real well together.” (laughs) And I thought that was a great line.
We touched earlier on your being a survivor. I think it was genetics. I think it was luck. I think it was attitude that got me through a lot of it. I believe in miracles. It’s a miracle that I’m still here. And I plan on being here a while longer.
JFK: ULTIMATE COLLECTOR’S EDITON (Warner Bros.) Mammoth 3-disc box set of Oliver Stone’s director’s cut (an extra 17 minutes of footage) of his controversial, spellbinding look at New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner)’s investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Also features an excellent new documentary THE KENNEDYS: AMERICA’S EMERALD KINGS which takes a look at five generations of America’s most influential and tragic public family. Bonuses: Documentaries; Featurettes; Multimedia essays; Deleted/extended scenes; Trailers; 44 page book; Reproductions of JFK’s correspondence; Archival footage; Commentary by Stone. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. PARAMOUNT CENTENNIAL COLLECTION Paramount inaugurates a new series of classic films on DVD with two disc sets of SUNSET BOULEVARD, Billy Wilder’s cynical classic about a washed-up screenwriter (William Holden)’s self-destructive affair with a faded silent movie queen (Gloria Swanson). ROMAN HOLIDAY stars Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn as an American reporter and a European princess, respectively, whose chance encounter goes from a day of playing hooky from their duties to full-blown romance. SABRINA again stars Hepburn and Holden, with able support from Humphrey Bogart, in Billy Wilder’s classic love triangle about two brothers who fall for their chauffeur’s newly-blossomed daughter. Bonuses on all: Featurettes; Documentaries; Trailers; Photo galleries. All are full screen, Dolby 2.0 mono. ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (Image) Beautiful, fascinating documentary from Werner Herzog explores the frozen tundra of Antarctica and reveals sights and sounds that few humans have, or ever will, see in their lifetime. Truly a work of art and beauty, and one of Herzog’s most joyous works. Bonuses: Commentary by Herzog; Featurettes; Jonathan Demme interviews Herzog; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. THE RON HOWARD SPOTLIGHT COLLECTION (Universal) Four of director Ron Howard’s most-lauded films, all in 2-disc sets: A BEAUTIFUL MIND, Howard’s Oscar-winning true story of a brilliant mathematician (Russell Crowe) struggling with mental illness; APOLLO 13, about the near-disastrous NASA mission that gripped the world; CINDERELLA MAN again stars Crowe, this time as Depression-era boxer James Braddock; and BACKDRAFT, the story of Chicago firefighters, enhanced by eye-popping special effects. Bonuses include: Commentary by Howard; Featurettes; Documentaries; Photo galleries; Trailers. All are widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. HANCOCK (Sony) Will Smith stars as Hancock, the world’s most obnoxious, politically incorrect superhero, who wreaks more havoc with his super gifts than he would like. After hiring a publicist (Jason Bateman) to help improve his image, Hancock finds his life turned around by a mystery woman (Charlize Theron) who shares some of his powers and a key to his past. Big, loud and completely lacking in any kind of subtlety, there are a few equally big, loud laughs, but overall film feels forced and never quite “takes off.” Bonuses: PG-13 and unrated versions; Featurettes; Digital copy of the film. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. THE GREGORY PECK FILM COLLECTION (Universal) Six classic titles featuring Gregory Peck: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, Peck’s Oscar-winning turn as lawyer Atticus Finch; ARABESQUE, a fun romantic thriller with Peck and Sophia Loren; CAPE FEAR, the original version of the nail-biting thriller starring Peck and Robert Mitchum, the latter as a vengeful ex-con seeking payback from his lawyer who double-crossed him; MIRAGE stars Peck as an amnesiac who struggles to remember why he’s surrounded by danger, deception and murder; CAPTAIN NEWMAN, M.D. has Peck leading an all-star cast in a look at life and love in a military hospital during WW II; THE WORLD IN HIS ARMS features Peck as a sea captain out to rescue his lady love and beat his rival (Anthony Quinn). Bonuses: Documentary on Peck; Featurettes; Trailers, Photo galleries. Full and widescreen. Dolby 2.0 mono. THE HOMEFRONT COLLECTION Warner Bros. releases three of its most popular WW II-era titles: IRVING BERLIN’S THIS IS THE ARMY, propelled by Berlin’s patriotic songs, this Technicolor revue features an all-star GI cast; THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS features an all-star cast in a breezy, behind-the-scenes Hollywood story; HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN is a who’s-who of Hollywood stars from the ‘40s, in a scintillating salute to the legendary Tinseltown nightclub for servicemen. Bonuses: Documentary; Outtakes; Featurettes; Warner Night at the Movies. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. A CHRISTMAS STORY: ULTIMATE COLLECTOR’S EDITION (Warner Bros.) The late Bob Clark’s beloved adaptation of Jean Shepherd (who narrates)’s autobiographical look at his childhood in WW II-era Ohio. Charming film just gets better with each passing year. 2-disc set is beautifully packaged in a cookie tin, with five cookie cutters, a 48-page recipe book, and a custom chef’s apron. Film-oriented bonuses include: Commentary by cast and crew; Featurettes; Jean Shepherd audio readings; Trailers. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. ANIMAL HOUSE: 30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION (Universal) Classic comedy about college shenanigans in the early ‘60s made a star of John Belushi and launched the “slob comedy” genre. Raucous fun all the way around. Bonuses: New retrospective documentary; Featurettes; Scene It: Animal House Edition; Faber College yearbook. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. TROPIC THUNDER: 2 DISC DIRECTOR’S CUT (Paramount) Co-writer/director/star Ben Stiller’s outrageous Hollywood satire about a company of actors shooting a war epic in the jungles of Vietnam who find themselves at war for real with drug-runners. Robert Downey, Jr.’s portrait of an Aussie Method actor gone haywire is worthy of an Oscar nod. Bonuses: Cast and crew commentary; Featurettes; Deleted/extended scenes; Alternate ending; Rehearsal footage. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. CASINO ROYALE: COLLECTOR’S EDITION (MGM/UA) This 1967 “adaptation” of Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel is a glorious mess, helmed by numerous directors (including John Huston), and featuring as bizarre a cast ever assembled for a studio picture (Woody Allen and Orson Welles, anyone?). Still, a fun and fascinating time capsule of the psychedelic era, with truly dazzling sets and costumes. Bonuses: Commentary by film historians; Five-part documentary; Trailer; Photo gallery. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. THE BOYS IN THE BAND (Paramount) William Friedkin directs Mart Crowley’s own adaptation of his landmark play about gay men in New York City for this controversial 1970 film, the first mainstream studio release to deal with the subject of homosexuality openly. Dated in part, to be sure, but also remarkably contemporary and still-relevant, with the original Broadway cast, including Cliff Gorman, reprising their roles. Bonuses: Commentary by Friedkin; Three featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER? (Sony) Fine drama about a renowned writer and poet (Colin Firth) coming to terms with his dying father (Jim Broadbent) during a visit home. Honest to a fault and never maudlin, featuring expert performances by a who’s-who of British stage and screen, including Juliet Stevenson, Gina McKee, and Claire Skinner. Bonuses: Commentary by director Anand Tucker; Deleted scenes. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. HELLBOY II: SPECIAL EDITION (Universal) Hellboy is back as a ruthless prince awakens an unstoppable army of otherworldly creatures who wage war upon the human world. Ron Perlman is great fun again as the red-hued, cigar-chomping “good demon,” with fine support from Selma Blair and Jeffrey Tambor. As always, director Guillermo Del Toro offers up enough eye candy for a dozen movies. Also available in Blu-ray format. 3-disc set bonuses include: Documentary; Featurettes; Deleted scenes; Commentary by Del Toro; Trailers. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. FANFAN LA TULIPE (Criterion) Gerard Philipe stars in this swashbuckling adventure as a peasant solider who finds himself in the midst of high adventure and the arms of lovely Gina Lollobrigida. Dazzling stunts and set pieces galore in this 1952 French classic, beautifully restored. Bonuses: Featurettes; Trailer; Colorized clip. Full screen. Dolby 1.0 mono. WARNER BROS. CLASSIC HOLIDAY COLLECTION, VOL. 2 Four classic holiday-themed films from the brothers Warner: ALL MINE TO GIVE is an early Technicolor classic about a youth who sets out to find homes for all five of his orphaned siblings; HOLIDAY AFFAIR stars Robert Mitchum as an out-of-work clerk who puts his meager funds where his heart is to help a child; IT HAPPENED ON 5th AVENUE follows a group of GI families hit by the post-WW II housing crunch who take over an abandoned mansion in NYC; BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST stars Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon in a biopic of children’s activist Edna Gladney. Bonuses: Warner Night at the Movies. All are full screen, Dolby 2.0 mono. THE FILMS OF BUDD BOETTICHER (Sony) Classic westerns introduced by the likes of Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese and Taylor Hackford: THE TALL T, DECISION AT SUNDOWN, BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE, RIDE LONESOME, and COMMANCHE STATION all filmed between 1957-1960 by Boetticher, a master of the western genre, starring Randolph Scott, and penned by Burt Kennedy, who would go onto a prominent directing career himself. Fun early work from the likes of James Coburn, Richard Boone and Lee Van Cleef in support. Bonuses: Commentary by Eastwood, Hackford and Scorsese; Documentary. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 mono. MISSING (Criterion) Gripping political thriller from Costa-Gavras about an American (Jack Lemmon) who teams with his estranged daughter-in-law (Sissy Spacek) to find his son (John Shea) who disappeared during the 1973 coup in Chile. All the more chilling as it is based on a true story! Bonuses: Trailer; Interviews with cast, crew and real-life counterparts; Archival interviews; Featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby 1.0 mono. COLUMBIA PICTURES BEST PICTURE COLLECTION (Sony) Mammoth box set featuring eleven Best Picture winners from decades’ past: A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (1966); KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979); YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938); FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953); ON THE WATERFRONT (1954); THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957); OLIVER! (1968); IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1933); ALL THE KING’S MEN (1949); GANDHI (1983) and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) are all beautifully restored and remastered. Bonuses: Commentary from cast, crew and film historians; Commemorative book; Trailers; Photo galleries; Featurettes. Full and widescreen. Dolby 1.0 and 2.0 mono, 5.1 surround. WHAT WE DO IS SECRET (Peace Arch/Rhino Films) Powerful docudrama about Darby Crash, lead singer of the pioneering L.A. punk band The Germs, and his short, tortured life that was snuffed out by drugs, alcohol and mental illness. Beautifully captures late ‘70s/early ‘80s Los Angeles, and the disaffected kids who made up the punk scene. Shane West scores big as Darby, in an eerily accurate portrayal. Bonuses: Commentary by cast and crew; Trailer; Digital copy of film. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. SLACKER UPRISING (BraveNew/Disinformation) Michael Moore’s documentary look at his 62-city tour of the swing states during the 2004 presidential election, where he tries to convince 18-29 year-old so-called “slackers” to become involved in the democratic process and exercise their right to vote. Fascinating, frank and funny, with Moore’s very specific brand of humor running throughout. Bonuses: 9 featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. THE BOURNE TRILOGY (Universal) Matt Damon stars as Jason Bourne, an amnesiac who discovers that he was a CIA assassin in three thrillers that helped reinvent the spy film genre: THE BOURNE IDENTITY, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM. All shot in gritty, cinema-verite style, with only the final chapter lacking somewhat in story and character and engaging in sensory overload with non-stop action and a camera that just won’t stop shaking! Still, great fun all around. Bonuses on all: Commentary by directors Paul Greengrass and Doug Liman; Featurettes; Deleted scenes; Trailers. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. WARNER BROS. GANGSTERS COLLECTION, VOL. 4 More of WB’s greatest classic gangster titles arrive on DVD: THE AMAZING DR. CLITTERHOUSE stars Edward G. Robinson as a doctor who infiltrates a gang led by Humphrey Bogart; INVISIBLE STRIPES features Bogie and George Raft as ex-cons trying to go straight; KID GALAHAD stars Bogie, Robinson, and Bette Davis in one of the all-time great boxing pictures; LARCENY, INC. Features Robinson, Anthony Quinn and Jane Wyman in the story of ex-cons planning a bank heist; THE LITTLE GIANT stars Robinson as an ex-gangster who tries to join high society. Bonus disc: the documentary PUBLIC ENEMIES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE GANGSTER FILM. Other bonuses: Commentary by film historians; Warner Night at the Movies. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. ROBERTO ROSSELLINI: 2-DISC COLLECTOR’S EDITION (Lions Gate) Two rare films from “the father of neo-realism.” WHERE IS FREEDOM? is a darkly comic satire about a recently-paroled murderer who finds that the outside world has become so evil and corrupt, he must find a way back to prison! ESCAPE BY NIGHT is a riveting thriller set in Nazi-occupied Rome where a beautiful bootlegger gives sanctuary to three escaped POWs: an American, a Brit and a Russian, with the Germans hot on their tails. Both are full screen, Dolby 1.0 mono. ABBOT & COSTELLO: THE COMPLETE UNIVERSAL PICTURES COLLECTION features all 28 feature films from the comedy duo, made between 1940-1955, in a magnificent box set. Highlights from the films include the classic service comedy BUCK PRIVATES (1941) and ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948). Bonuses include: Collectible book; Featurettes; Six commentary tracks by film historians; Trailers; Archival footage; Photo galleries. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON (Magnolia) Alex Gibney’s knock-out portrait of writer Hunter S. Thompson and his elusive brand of self-destructive genius is a one-of-a-kind look at a truly unique voice of American letters. Through interviews with Thompson’s family, friends and colleagues, archival footage of Thompson at work and at play, and excerpts of Thompson’s writings, Gibney paints a warts-and-all picture of a man who made leaping into the personal and creative abyss an art form. Bonuses: Commentary by Gibney; Deleted scenes; Extended interviews; Audio excerpts; Featurettes; Ralph Steadman art gallery; Photo galleries. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. BLU-RAY TITLES The biggest news for Blu-ray this month is MGM/20th Century Fox’s release of THE JAMES BOND BLU-RAY COLLECTION, VOL. 1 and 2, featuring DR. NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, THUNDERBALL, LIVE AND LET DIE, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, and DIE ANOTHER DAY, a nice combination of different Bonds (Connery, Moore, and Brosnan) from different eras, there couldn’t be a more perfect fit for Blu-ray than the Bond series! Loaded with bonuses and extras, including: Commentary with cast and crew; Smart menu technology; Featurettes; Trailers, TV spots and radio ads; Interviews with cast and crew, both archival and new; Photo galleries. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround. Also from Fox, Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny de Vito in the comedy adventure ROMANCING THE STONE and its sequel, JEWEL OF THE NILE. Bonuses: Audio commentary; Featurettes; Trailers. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround. THE OMEN COLLECTION features all four films in the series: the original THE OMEN, directed by Richard Donner, starring Gregory Peck, one of the ‘70s great chillers; DAMIEN: OMEN II; OMEN III: THE FINAL CONFLICT, and the 2006 remake of THE OMEN. Bonuses: Commentary by cast and crew; Featurettes; Deleted scenes; Trailers and TV spots. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround. Mel Brooks’ comedy classic YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN with Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman arrives, loaded with extras, including Commentary by Brooks; Featurettes; Outtakes; Isolated score track; Archival interviews; Deleted scenes; Photo galleries; Trailers and TV spots. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround. Somerville House releases the erotic classic THE STORY OF O, from French porn auteur Just Jaecklin, about a young woman who indulges her lover’s desire for sexual fantasy and exploration. Bonuses: Commentary by Jaecklin; Trailers; Deleted scenes; Photo gallery. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 mono. BLACK CHRISTMAS is an early slasher classic from 1975 about a killer running amuck in a sorority house. Margot Kidder scores in an early turn as a foul-mouthed co-ed. Bonuses: Documentary; Interviews with cast members and crew. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. Blue Underground releases the sci-fi adventure THE FINAL COUNTDOWN, starring Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen in a fantastic tale about a modern-day nuclear aircraft carrier that’s transported back in time to the day before the Pearl Harbor attack! Bonuses: Commentary by cinematographer Victor J. Kemper; Interviews with cast and crew; Trailers and TV spots. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 7.1 surround. DON’T TOUCH THAT DIAL! Some of television’s greatest hits arrive on disc this month. Here’s a few of the highlights: A&E releases THE COMPLETE MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS COLLECTOR’S EDITION, a 21 DVD set featuring every episode of “Flying Circus,” plus two discs of live material, and two brand new Python documentaries, featuring interviews with the surviving members, as well as the comics who were influenced by them. Other bonuses: Deleted scenes; Additional animations; Featurettes; Six mega-quizzes; Pythonism glossary; Art gallery. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. Also from A&E is THE ADVENTURE COLLECTION, featuring all four “Horatio Hornblower” films starring Ioan Gruffudd: THE DUEL, THE FIRE SHIPS, THE DUCHESS AND THE DEVIL, and THE WRONG WAR, as well as LONGITUDE, NAPOLEON, SHACKLETON, THE LOST BATTALION and BENEDICT ARNOLD: A QUESTION OF HONOR. All the films feature world-class talent such as Kenneth Branagh, Aidan Quinn, Kelsey Grammer, Jeremy Irons and John Malkovich. Bonuses: Featurettes; Documentaries; “Biography” episodes. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. MPI releases DARK SHADOWS: THE BEGINNING, VOL. 6 featuring 30 rare, early episodes from 1967. Bonuses: Extra footage; Original commercials; Sales reel and promos; Newsreel footage; New interviews with cast and crew. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Universal releases THE INCREDIBLE HULK: THE COMPLETE SERIES, all 82 episodes on 20 discs, and KNIGHT RIDER: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION, all 85 episodes on 24 discs. Bonuses include: Interviews with cast and crew; Featurettes; Photo galleries; Episode commentary by Hulk series creator Kenneth Johnson. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. NIGHT GALLERY: SEASON TWO, features more fantastic tales from creator/host Rod Serling, as well as commentary from director Guillermo Del Toro, and TV historians; Featurettes; TV promos; Two “lost” episodes. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Paramount releases THE WILD WILD WEST: THE COMPLETE TV SERIES, a 27-disc collection of all four seasons of the hit series, starring Robert Conrad and Ross Martin as 19th century Secret Service agents. Bonuses: Both Wild Wild West TV movies; Featurettes; Interviews with cast and crew. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. STAR TREK THE ORIGINAL SERIES: SEASON THREE arrives with all 24 episodes remastered with new and enhanced special effects. Bonuses: Original pilot episode “The Cage,” in its original and extended versions; Home movies. Full screen. Dolby 5.1 surround. THE 4400: THE COMPLETE SERIES is a 15 disc collection of all four of the series’ seasons which tells the supernatural story of 4400 people who have disappeared throughout history, then suddenly return to Earth at once in a blinding explosion. Smart, suspenseful and fun sci-fi. Bonuses: Commentary on pilot episode; Featurettes; Deleted scenes; TV spots and promos. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. THE L WORD: THE COMPLETE FIFTH SEASON, is a 4-disc set of 12 episodes full of romance, intrigue and provocative storylines. Bonuses: Featurettes; Music video; Bonus episodes. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. THE MOD SQUAD: SEASON 1, VOL. 2 features more groovy, late ‘60s adventures from everyone’s favorite undercover hippie cops. Great time capsule of the era. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. HAWAII FIVE-O: THE FIFTH SEASON, features more bare-fisted crime fighting tales from Jack Lord’s Honolulu Police Department. 6-disc set features 24 episodes. Bonuses: Episode promos. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO: SEASON 2, VOL. 2 has Karl Malden and Michael Douglas keeping the city by the bay safe. 3 disc set with 12 episodes. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. JAG: THE SEVENTH SEASON, features 24 episodes on 5 discs, following the adventures of Naval lawyers in the Judge Advocate General’s office. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. Lions Gate releases THE PERSUADERS!, three feature-length films cut together from episodes of the ‘70s British TV classic, starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore as unlikely partners in crime fighting and adventure. Great fun! Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Arts Alliance releases THE DONNA REED SHOW: SEASON ONE, featuring the all-American, 1950s antics of Reed and her Midwestern family. Campy and fun. Bonuses: Photo gallery; Original TV spot; Production notes. BANACEK: THE COMPLETE SERIES features George Peppard as Boston’s wealthiest and most suave sleuth. 5-disc set features all 16 episodes which ran from 1972-74. Bonuses: Pilot episode; Photo gallery; Crossword puzzles. B.L. STRYKER: THE COMPLETE SERIES stars Burt Reynolds as a former New Orleans detective who returns to his native Florida as a private eye. 7-disc set features all 12 episodes, co-starring Ossie Davis and Rita Moreno. Bonuses: Original scripts. All are full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Shout Factory releases SON OF THE BEACH, VOL. 2, featuring 21 episodes from seasons two and three, in this satire of “Baywatch” and shows of the like. Bonuses: Featurettes; Commentary by series creators; Audition tapes. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono.
A family-friendly film. Based on a children's book. Set during the Holocaust. There's a filmmaking challenge of tone and taste inherent in such an endeavor, and the potential for a major disaster looms, a la the infamous, never-released The Day the Clown Cried, a Jerry Lewis-directed feature about a circus clown entertaining children on a train ride to the concentration camps. Shot back in the early 70s, that film has never seen the light of day and is still spoken about sort of as a cinematic urban legend, and a cautionary tale for filmmakers. British film director Mark Herman (Little Voice, Brassed Off) was wading into potentially dicey waters of a similar sort with his new feature, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, which he adapted from the internationally best-selling children's novel by John Boyne. The film centers around the friendship of two young boys, one the son of a top Nazi officer, and the other a Jewish prisoner in the concentration camp only a few hundred feet from the free boy's home. Herman can breathe easy, though, with the knowledge that he has successfully found the right balance of just about everything in telling this particular story. He allows his young characters to be somewhat naïve to the horrible specifics of the history transpiring around them. Those specifics are never explained to the audience directly either, and that is why Herman has created a film that all ages can relate to and which works regardless of one's historical knowledge. The younger audience will see it initially as a story of an unlikely friendship, which faces unique challenges, and a viewing of the film will also cause the younger viewer to ask their elders the more specific questions of what was going on historically to make certain characters behave the way they did. The older portion of the audience can obviously fill in the blanks of that history for themselves, which will accentuate the darker beats of the narrative, particularly the uncompromising, bleak ending.
Elaborates Herman, "I think this is a family film in the truest sense, in that kids and their parents can watch it together and both understand it. The first time we screened it was amazing, there was just this silence from everyone at the end." And he has indeed found that the film raises interest in its young viewers to want to learn more about the Holocaust. Says Herman, "It's a good first step [in terms of education]. It's not an easy ride, for kids, to learn more about the story. It's quite a shock."In regards to that aforementioned ending - the specifics of which we won't reveal other than to say it as dark as anything which has appeared in a family-targeted film, well, probably ever – Herman inevitably must have experienced some pressure from financiers to change or tone it down. "I never would have gone down this long road without that ending," explains Herman. "I said to Miramax at the beginning that we shouldn't start this if we weren't going to keep the ending."
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas will be released by Miramax on November 7th.
Tonight, that being 11/5, the Aero Theater in Santa Monica is hosting a special screening of ED WOOD, followed by a Q&A with screenwriters Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander and co-star Martin Landau, who won an Oscar for his turn here as Bela Lugosi. The event is to be moderated by Gregory Weinkauf of UberCine. It starts at 7:30 and advance tickets can be purchased on Fandango.com. If you haven't seen ED WOOD, it was birthed from one of the best screenplays of the 90s by Karaszewski & Alexander, who also wrote another great biopic with THE PEOPLE v. LARRY FLYNT. It will be great to hear them talk about the project. It is also, in my opinion, Tim Burton's best film. Largely because he has a great screenplay to work with here, and he actually sticks to it.
THE "BEAT" GOES ON: TAKESHI KITANO HITS AMERICAN SOIL WITH A VENGEANCE IN BROTHER By Alex Simon
Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the May, 2001 issue of Venice Magazine.
If Japan had an answer to Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin, Don Siegel and Jean-Pierre Melville all wrapped in one, it would undoubtedly be "Beat" Takeshi Kitano. An actor, filmmaker, producer, writer, television star and national treasure, Takeshi Kitano has carved a unique niche for himself in both Japanese and world popular culture. Born into a working class family in Tokyo in 1947, Kitano entered show business in 1972 after initially pursuing a degree in engineering. Using the stage name "Beat" Takeshi, the moniker he still uses as a performer, Kitano was half of the now-legendary comic duo The Two Beats, and a leading figure in the birth of the manzai (stand-up comic duo) boom in late 1970's Japan. Throughout the 1980's, Kitano became one of the most popular entertainers in the country with his distinctive art of speech and his idiosyncratic perspective.
He made his feature film debut in 1983's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, directed by the legendary Nagisa Oshima, a WW II drama co-starring David Bowie and Tom Conti set in a Japanese P.O.W. camp. Kitano's harrowing portrayal of a sadistic camp guard re-invented his image from funny man to tough guy. His next feature, Violent Cop (1989) marked his directing debut in a kinetic tale of an amoral bad-ass of a policeman, sort of a Japanese Dirty Harry, if you will. The film gained international recognition for Kitano, and launched a new chapter in his professional life, as well as a new film genre unto itself in Japan.
A Takeshi Kitano film delivers what great directors and stars (like the ones mentioned above) used to bring to their films of the 60's and 70's: spare, understated tales of amoral loners fighting the system, punctuated by bursts of jarring (and graphic) violence, the sort that deglamourizes bloodletting to the extreme, usually involving Yakuza (Japanese Mafia), rogue cops, or both as leading characters. The past decade has seen Kitano helm seven other features that made big splashes on this side of the Pond as well: fierce action dramas such as the surrealistic Boiling Point (1990), the hard-bitten Sonatine (1993), and the urban cop drama Hana-bi (or Fireworks, 1997), which won the Golden Lion at the 1997 Venice Film Festival and was named Best Non-European Film at the European Film Academy Awards. Kitano has also made comedies, often underscored with moments of great tenderness, such as A Scene at the Sea (1991), Getting Any? (1995), Kids' Return (1996) and Kikujiro (1999).
Kitano remains one of the most popular (if not the biggest) media star in Japan, having also written novels, short stories, poetry and essay collections. An accomplished painter, an interest he developed after a near-fatal motorcycle accident in the early 1990's, Kitano at times uses his artwork in his own films to startling and symbolic effect. He also sponsors an amateur baseball team for which he sometimes plays, has released several CD's, and manages a group of comedians and actors.
Kitano's latest film is unquestionably his finest, and marks the first time he has directed a film outside his native Japan. Brother tells the story of a Yakuza named Yamamoto (Kitano) who is forced to leave Tokyo after his gang has been wiped out. Hooking up with his younger half-brother Ken (Claude Maki) in Los Angeles. Ken is a small time hood, one of his associates being an African-American named Denny (Omar Epps). In spite of their initial hatred for each other, as Yamamoto shows these young men the ropes and the way of the Yakuza, Yamamoto and Denny soon find themselves heading the most powerful gang in the city, and also forming a close bond of friendship. Brother is easily one of the best films of 2001, and will hopefully be remembered as a Best Foreign Film contender for next year's Academy Awards.
Takeshi Kitano was in Los Angeles recently to promote his latest cinematic explosion of blood, bullets and brotherhood. With the help of an interpreter, Venice spoke with this accomplished renaissance man about what gives Takeshi Kitano his "Beat."
Tell us how you came up with the idea for Brother, which is really a story about culture clash. Takeshi Kitano: I had been thinking of a story like this for a long time--a fish out of water story, if you will. Then (Producer) Jeremy Thomas asked me at the London Film Festival if I wanted to do something outside of Japan. I immediately said 'yes,' and told him this idea I had been developing for a long time, that idea grew into Brother.
Kitano and Omar Epps in Brother.
Is it different working with American actors, as opposed to Japanese actors? Well, yes and no. For example, Susumu Terajima has been working with me for more than ten years. He used to be an extra when I did my first film, Violent Cop, and since them has regularly appeared in my films, gradually upgrading the characters he played. In Brother he plays his biggest role so far. Because we've been working together so long, he knows my working style and the type of characters I want in my films, so it was very natural working with him. In terms of the American actors, obviously most were not familiar with my films or my working style. I usually do only one or two rehearsals before shooting, then only do one take. So at first, the American actors were like "That's it? Wait a minute, I didn't prepare enough!" Once they got to know the rhythm of the shoot, I think they found my style comfortable. In terms of how I like to direct actors, rarely will I tell an actor to do something different in a scene after we've rehearsed. If he's doing something I don't like, I'll try to think up a new way to shoot it, a different angle. I've never been the kind of director who gives minute instructions to the actors.
Who have been some of your biggest influences as a filmmaker? It's very embarrassing to say this, but I was never brought up on cinema as a kid. I was never even a film buff. For that matter, I didn't really start watching films seriously until I became a director myself. After my first film festival in Europe, all these journalists started asking me if I'd been influenced by people like Jean-Luc Goddard, Kurosawa, and others, and I'd never even heard of these guys! So when I got back to Japan, I asked my assistant to get video copies of films by these guys, and I studied up.
Let's talk about your background. I was born and raised in Tokyo. My father was a house painter, and allegedly used to be a Yakuza, and if not, was generally just an outrageous kind of character. My mother was a very hard-working woman who would work in the bean cake factory during the day, and at night would work manufacturing children's toys, part-time. She was very education-minded, and was very keen on having her son get a better education so we could get out of these poor conditions in 50's and 60's Japan. My neighborhood was a typical working class area. Most of my neighbors were either Yakuza, or craftsmen. Japan was going through rapid growth economically at the time, so my mother told us kids to concentrate on scientific studies like engineering, subjects that were practically advantageous in terms of getting a good job. So as a kid, I was never allowed to read comics, read novels, watch films. I had to concentrate on my studies, which led me to the engineering department at the university.
So that's where your fascination with the Yakuza comes from. You grew up around them. That's true. Actually, in my neighborhood amongst us kids, there were two types of people that were considered cool: professional baseball players and Yakuza, who usually dressed and looked really cool. The Yakuza were always very good to us kids. They would give us allowance money, buy us candy, and things like that. At the same time, they played an education role. If they found us having a smoke, or drinking, they would scold us. They would say things like "Always be very kind to your parents and stay in school, otherwise you'll end up like me," which was very weird, right? But it also got through to me.
Kitano in Violent Cop, his directing debut.
It sounds like you're describing growing up in a place like Brooklyn, NY. here. Yes, but instead of guns, we had knives. That's probably the only difference. (laughs)
So initially, you went to university to become an engineer. What happened? I went to a middle level university to study engineering. In my university, you literally had to be a straight 'A' student to go to companies like Toyota and Honda. Because it wasn't a top-notch school, you had to work that much harder if you were going to go anywhere. When I was a sophomore, I thought that the laser beam would be more commonly used in engineering, so I studied that. This was a time in the 60's when there were lots of student protests going on, and suddenly the whole campus was locked out. Because the professors couldn't hold their lectures, they had the students submit essays. But if you're an engineering student, you can't write an essay about what you're studying! So I had to drop out eventually, and this is also a time when a lot of experimental theater was happening in Tokyo. One of my friends went into that. So I went to the asakusa area, which is the entertainment section of the city, and got a part-time job in a strip joint as a busboy. One day, while I was working, the owner showed up and said they were doing this sketch comedy thing, where one of the actors was sick, and why don't you fill in for him? So that's how I became a comedian--by accident.
Kitano in Sonatine.
You were a member of a famous comedy team called "The Two Beats," which is how you got your nickname. Is stand-up in Japan the same as here? Well, they have this theater where most of the comedy performers gather. It opens at 10 in the morning and stays open 'til 9 in the evening, so these were my working times. My principal place for my performance was theater, rather than clubs, like here in the States. Although there are clubs there where you can make a lot of money, but principally it was the theater. What happens if you perform in nightclubs, or cabarets, these are the places where the Yakuza guys hang out. If they like your performance, they'll invite you to have a drink, then tell us legendary stories of the big bosses, and that's how I came to acquire that knowledge, some really interesting stories.
How did you make the transition from comic to playing tough guys? Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence was done when I was sort of at the peak of my popularity as a comedian, and was suddenly becoming very well known throughout Japan as a comedian. But, I knew that this was not going to last long, being a stand-up comic. I knew I had to do something different, and that is when Mr. Oshima offered me the role in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. Without knowing what acting really was or what filmmaking was all about, I said 'Okay, that would be great.' I thought I might surprise people, playing this kind of part. After seeing the film, I thought my performance was not bad at all, actually, so I was looking forward to see the reaction of the audience. One day I snuck into a theater to see their reaction, and was quite surprised to find that the first scene where I appear, the whole audience suddenly burst into laughter, as if I had suddenly appeared on stage doing a routine! I was devastated by their reaction, because this character was supposed to be very intimidating and mysterious, not somebody to be laughed at! (laughs) But here they were, still perceiving me as this funny, crazy comedian. After that, I only accepted parts playing serious, dark, evil characters. It took ten years of my playing those types of roles before I was perceived as being a serious actor.
You made your directoral debut with Violent Cop in 1989. Originally you were only slated to act in it, right? Yes. What happened was, the original director wanted me to be available for one consecutive month so I could concentrate on the shooting of this film, which wasn't an option for me because of my TV commitment, which consisted of seven or eight weekly shows at that time. I can devote one week for a film's shooting, but the next week I have to devote to TV. So we tried to find a compromise, but couldn't, so the original director dropped out and the project was almost abandoned, until the distributor approached me and suggested that I direct the film according to my own schedule, and I saw no reason to decline their offer.
What kind of television shows are you involved with in Japan? They vary in content. Right now I have seven weekly shows, one of which is like a Discovery Channel show, a scientific variety program. I'm also doing an art variety program in which we invite amateur painters, sculptors and musicians to the studio where they can display and perform their work. I also have a debate program, sort of like "Politically Incorrect" here. I also have a late night slapstick comedy show. The newest show is very interesting in which we call in 100 Japanese-speaking foreigners into the studio in which we discuss the strange behavior and disposition of the Japanese people, again, kind of like a debate program. I think my interest in science comes from my engineering background.
Kitano about to win a fight in the international hit Fireworks (aka Hana-Bi).
You had a near-fatal motorcycle accident in the early 1990's. Did surviving that accident change your outlook on life, and did it change your outlook as a filmmaker at all? It was quite a terrible accident and I was told by the doctors that it was a miracle I survived. I struck the right side of my face so badly, that I had to have an operation to reconstruct it. Once I recovered and regained consciousness, I thought 'Wow, this is a big opportunity for me.' You always read about someone surviving a horrible accident and they suddenly have a religious and philosophical enlightenment or suddenly snaps in the brain and turns the person into a genius. I thought to myself, 'Oh, that can happen to me, too!' (laughs) That's the reason I took up painting after the accident. I thought some disorder resulting from the accident would turn me into a genius painter, another Picasso. Well, as it turned out, I was totally wrong. I haven't changed at all! (laughs) The very first painting I did, I realized that. So it was very disappointing.
Kitano in a rare moment of vulnerability in Boiling Point.
What advice would you have for first time directors? My advice is: trust nobody. Don't listen to what anybody has to say, just stick to your guns and trust your instincts. If you start to listen to people and put their ideas in your first movie, then you'll have to compromise more on your second, and it will just get worse and worse from there. You can always listen to advice on your third or fourth film, but on your first, stick to your guns. Just be prepared to be labeled a "box office unfriendly" director, like I used to be, if you do this. (laughs)
(Note: This article will be appearing in this month's Venice Magazine.)
By Terry Keefe
With Daniel Craig adding a far harder-edge to his new James Bond, it figures that his female counterparts might need to bring the same level of intensity to the story and that’s just what they’ve gotten from Olga Kurylenko, who plays the revenge-driven Camille opposite Craig in the new Bonder, Quantum of Solace. Camille looks great wearing the top fashions, but she will just as easily smash your nose in with the heel of her Prada shoe. And like Craig’s Bond, her character is also considerably better developed than the versions who have come before.
Plotwise, Quantum picks up just one hour after Casino ends, making it the first Bond film in memory to take place in such chronological order. Heartbroken by the death of his beloved Vesper (played in the previous installment by Eva Green), Bond goes on the trail of the mysterious organization, known only as Quantum, who he believes responsible for Vesper’s murder. In Haiti, Bond meets Camille, who has shacked up with a Quantum operative named Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), in order to get closer to the Bolivian General Medrano (Joaquin Cosio) who murdered Camille’s family. Camille is on a revenge mission which parallels the one Bond is on, and what forms is a partnership of sorts, with no time for romance. Camille’s character is given almost as much motivation and as many beats as that of Bond, and the climax finds them each fighting their respective foils to the death simultaneously. Before seeing Quantum of Solace, I wasn’t really familiar with who Olga Kurylenko was, having missed her co-starring role in Hitman earlier in the year. But new billboards have just gone up all over town with her face right next to Craig’s, indicating the confidence that the producers have in her performance. Many of the Bond Girls from the past have sort of disappeared from the public eye relatively quickly once the 007 glow faded, but the career of the Ukraine-born Kurylenko looks to be just getting warmed up. I just saw you last night in Quantum of Solace, but also the night before, when I went to see Max Payne.
Olga Kurylenko: Did you? I actually haven’t seen that yet. I’ve been so busy with this [indicates the massive press operation]. I’m not in that very long, am I? I get killed pretty early.
But before that happens, you were sort of treated as the second lead, so it was a bit of a surprise to see you get killed off.
Right. I hope people got my performance. I was trying to play her really big and large, because she’s part of this crazy world.
She fit in well. I was sorry to see her go, but in Quantum, your character’s survival skills are a lot better. The first major set piece you’re in is the pretty amazing boat chase in Haiti. The audience I saw this with last night burst out into applause at the end of it.
Really? I’m happy because that one took a long time! I trained every day for six months for this film. Every day I wasn’t on the set, I was training. And before we started shooting, I trained every day for months, four hours a day.
What type of training are we talking about? Was it mostly hand-to-hand combat?
Yeah, four hours of fight training a day, and then I went on to do two hours a day of the skydiving training in the wind tunnel, which I did for a month. The wind tunnel was insane, but it’s also insanely addictive. You’re flying! You do all these tricks – you learn to turn and flip. Then I had to learn to work with guns. To shoot, and aim, and to strip a gun apart, and to put it back together. I really had to know what I was doing.
Did you conquer any fears from the training?
Oh yes [laughs]. Because I don’t like heights too much, but I obviously had to work with heights.
And there’s that scene where you’re nearly pushed off the building.
Yes [laughs], and, believe me, I was looking down and I was like, “Ohhh...” The stunt guys took me up there the evening before we were going to shoot and said that we were going to rehearse and tomorrow we were just going to have to do it. Using a stunt double was not an option. And I overcame my fear on that one and I’m very proud, because I know what it was for me to fight through it. I feel like I can do anything now.
(Olga's Camille is pawned off by Greene (Mathieu Amalric) on a soon-to-be-dead criminal.)
Let’s talk about the audition process.
Well, there were three auditions altogether. I knew that I was going in the right direction after I was called back, but that was all I knew. The last audition was really so intense, because it was when I met Danny for the first time. Then it was three weeks after that I got the call that I had gotten the role, which was on Christmas Day.
This is obviously Daniel’s second time doing a Bond film. Was there any advice that he gave you regarding the shooting of the action scenes?
Not so much as it was always reassuring to look over and see him and know that that the other actor, meaning Daniel, really knew what he was doing in the action scenes. He had been through all the training and had done this already. That helped a lot.
Daniel’s Bond is extremely intense. Is there a moment during the shooting where he just turns that on, or does he walk around like that all day on the set?
Oh, on set he’s Bond [laughs]. Always.
(Daniel Craig and Olga Kurylenko)
This is the first Bond film that I can remember where the female lead has a parallel story going on which is almost as important to the film as Bond’s.
I really liked that it was a totally different type of Bond Girl. She’s so strong. I really didn’t want to play the typical girl in these films. I was very excited, because I had seen Casino Royale, and seen that the concept had changed. The Bond Girl could be very interesting. I had so much to do in this film.
But one of those things didn’t involve sleeping with Bond, which is a big change also.
[laughs] I was happy about that, and I think people will be happy about that too. We’ve seen that Bond Girl already. This girl is something new. Something special.
The platonic partnership worked well with Daniel’s character arc, also, because he’s still heartbroken from the last film.
Exactly, that worked perfectly. She’s not into that, but he also isn’t into that either [laughs]. He’s not even thinking about sex, because he’s just lost the woman he loved the most. Obviously, Bond is pretty playful and he’s used women many, many times [laughs]. But what’s great about these new films is that it’s proven that Bond can fall in love.
Did you watch many of the classic Bond films as preparation?
I did. It was more that I had re-watched them, actually, because I had seen most of them. But my favorite of all the previous films would still probably be Casino Royale. It’s great to see the old films, but this series had to evolve. You can’t do the same things over and over again.
Prior to this, Marc Forster would have known more as an actor’s director, rather than a director of huge spectacle. He was an interesting choice.
I’m very glad he was the director because he really brought out the characters. It was something that was needed. It was so great to have someone like him, because you could have had a very impersonal director that only cared about the action. But this movie was also about pain, and love.
Mathieu Amalric is fantastic as the villain, Greene. He’s not a stock character at all. He plays him as charming and very persuasive, and complex, and entirely creepy at the same time.
He is such a versatile villain! And yes, his character is so creepy, but also, he wasn’t obvious about it. It’s subtle. And on the set, he was always in constant research for the character and thinking, “Oh, what am I going to do next?” Every take, he’d try different versions and go for something different. In one scene, he’d do five different takes, with totally different levels, which gave Marc a bunch of choices to work with. A total range of emotion.
(Mathieu Amalric as Dominic Greene.)
Did Mathieu at least give you any warning that he’d be playing it differently on a new take?
Yes [laughs]. He’d say, “Hmm, what am I going to do now? I’ve got it. I’m going to do something totally different!” And I’d say, “What?!” and he wouldn’t tell me. But that was very exciting, because he’d surprise me all the time. Stuff that wasn’t in the script. And so, because of that, my performance would change too. And thanks to that, I wasn’t acting anymore. I was living. Living in the moment. It’s all much more real.
I think Mathieu is going to be a big star over here.
I think so too [laughs] except that he doesn’t want that.
Having just come off Quantum, you’re ready to parachute into any action role now it seems. No training necessary.
I am so ready [laughs]. I actually already shot another film after this, in Israel [Editor’s Note: She plays a hitwoman in the film Kirot], and there were some fight scenes for my character. And the stunt guy said, “Oh, well, we have nothing to tell you. You just finished a Bond film.” [laughs]
Quantum of Solace opens everywhere in the United States on November 14th.
Welcome to the website of writers Alex Simon & Terry Keefe. Every week, we log many hours interviewing the top actors, directors, and writers in Hollywood. Here you'll find some of those great Q&A's, plus some entertainment industry news and our musings on this business of show.
.jpg)
