Easy Street (the Hard Way): A Memoir (18 page)

I didn’t budge. “I really feel as though it’s important that you and I come to some sort of an arrangement. Because obviously what’s happened these first two days is not good for anybody!”

“You think so?!” He started yelling and screaming. “Look! It’s not my fault you can’t climb a fucking tree.” He started attacking me to the point at which he was completely not interested in engaging on any rational level. You could tell that the pressure he was under was so palpable, it didn’t compare to anything I’d ever experienced before. I had never been on a movie before, and I never realized what’s at stake and how expensive every shooting day is. And when you get behind a day, especially on a movie like that, in which you only have these locations for a limited amount of time—if you don’t stay on schedule, disaster lurks just around the corner.

Yes, it was partly my fault, but what I wanted to tell him was that if he had planned this differently and had taken into account his actor’s needs and enabled him to give a performance rather than be challenged into doing difficult physical tasks in a compromised state, it would all go smoother. I wanted to communicate to him that if you just figure out a way to empower me to play this character in a way in which I’m actually in control of the elements rather than the elements being in control of me, I can maybe give a performance, and then everything would work out way better than you can imagine. I started to explain that to him. But he was having none of it and instead was looking to make a quick exit and leave me to my own miserable misery.

I said, “Hey! Hang on! You yelled, now it’s my turn!” Remember, I’ve never been on a movie before. Here I was yelling at the director, and people were turning their heads in the dining room, going, “Oh shit . . . Perlman . . . oh my God, he’s about to be on the next plane back to fucking New York. They’re gonna dropkick his ass for sure.”

Jean-Jacque stopped and listened as I explained that if an actor is completely compromised by the elements and all he’s thinking about is his own survival, you’re just going to get a guy thinking about his own survival, not a performance.

He then said, “Do you think that I’m going to pull up a chair and sit back waiting for you to do whatever it is you are going to do, when all you’ve done for the last two days is completely fuck me and my movie?”

“Jean-Jacques, do yourself a favor and get yourself a fucking chair!” And I walked out.

Jean-Jacques and I did not speak for the next three weeks. Well, that is not entirely true: we spoke, especially him to me in order to describe the day’s work. But there was a palpable tension. On that third day of shooting the first sequence, we were up in the tree, doing all these scenes—this interaction between us and the tigers, us eating leaves out of sheer desperation, the ultimate departure of the tigers, and our eventual dismounting of the tree. So it’s a lot of stuff on that third day in order to make up for the time we had lost. Well, not only did we get it all in the can by four o’clock in the afternoon, but we also had enough time to do this beautiful improvisation that was not even in the script but was phenomenal because we caught the most beautiful light of the day, with us exiting the tree and playing out the relief of having escaped with our lives. There was a palpable sense of relief from both the crew and the cast because, just like that, we were back on schedule. I had stayed up very late the night before figuring out what I needed to do to give the performance. I had just dared Annaud, and I knew if I didn’t deliver something akin to a miracle, I was toast. I knew that. And on that third day the tide got turned, and frenzy was replaced by order. And calm. And from that moment on, there was an obsessive determination on my part to prove my theory that with a modicum
of concern for safety and well-being, mixed with copious amounts of planning and homework, a detailed, nuanced performance could be given that would include but not be overpowered by the elements. And with that, there began a subtle evolving into the dynamic of my once-contentious relationship with Jean-Jacques.

Then, about three weeks into filming, when we’re finishing this one location, we got to this other scene. And suddenly something remarkable happened. As we got ready to rehearse the scene for the crew to watch, instead of staging the scene and designating camera angles, Jean-Jacques said, “Everybody take a seat. Let’s see what the actors are going to do.” And I froze for a moment: let’s see what
the actors
are going to do! Holy shit! That’s the first time he ever said that. And we improvised the scene, and he said, “Wow, that’s very nice. Okay, let’s just shoot it. We’ll put one camera over here. We’ll put one camera over there . . .” And for the rest of the movie that’s how it went: instead of directing a scene before he got a chance to see what we were gonna do, he actually watched what we were gonna do, and then, if he saw something that needed clarification or a different interpretation, he would give us notes and we would all be on the same page. But when he said nothing and we just went into shooting mode, that meant he was happy. And, as they say in France, the
rules of the game
were forever changed.

When we finally finished shooting our first leg in Scotland, Jean-Jacques and I had slowly and fantastically evolved into becoming the best of friends. This complete and amazing trust evolved between the two of us. There was now a division of labor. He realized that he didn’t have to do everything; he could let the actors do the acting, he could do the directing, and we can both be on the same page and both be making the same movie. And his transformation happened right in front of our eyes. I’ve now done three films with Jean-Jacques Annaud, and there’s no one on the planet—he’s tied with Guillermo—who has given me greater roles, respect, adoration, and love. He’s as close to being a family member as anyone I’ve met along the way. And I think we both believe we are so close to one another because we started off so
rocky. But at the end of the day he’s an incredibly fair-minded guy and talented guy. He’s just a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant man. A tried and true genius. But he knew what he wanted and, prior to that, had never imagined he could give over to the actor and the actor could supply not only what he was looking for but also maybe even something he hadn’t even imagined! I like to think there was a huge learning curve for both of us. I know there was one for me, because I came away from that experience believing it’s the director’s job to drive you to the point at which you can do nothing other than bring your A Game.

You can hate a director for that or you can love and admire a director for that because he’s actually pulling the best out of you. And it was with Jean-Jacques, on that movie, that I learned this. But I also watched him discover that the actor has spent a lot more time thinking about how to pull off this moment than even the director has because that’s his job. So to participate in this evolution of bringing together two different artistries to paint one picture . . . well, I can’t speak for Jean-Jacques, but there is a satisfaction to that convergence that rivals even the greatest of sensations. And the more detailed and bold the choices I was making, the more vivid the mutual wavelength we entered became, thus making him able to augment it, to vary it, to enhance it, and merge it into his vision for the rest of the picture. Jean-Jacques has just turned out to be one of the most sensational, magnificent, generous people I’ve met in all my travels. And as you will see, this was only the beginning of what would turn out to be one of the richest relationships of my lifetime.

After Scotland we went to Nairobi. The location was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the nearest anything, right in the middle of Tsavo National Park. It wasn’t until we arrived there that we were told there were no telephones—hell, the computer hadn’t been invented yet, nor had the cell phone, so forget about worrying about a signal. There weren’t even any land lines. No telegraphs, fax machines, coke dispensers—nada! There was simply no way to communicate back to civilization. For five weeks! And they didn’t tell us that until we arrived there. So we got really paranoid that our families were going to wonder
what the fuck happened to us. Anyway, we not only get through it, but Africa proved to yield the singular most unique experience of my life—spiritual even, like going back as close to the Garden of Eden as exists on this earth. And I discovered that the more intense the elements and conditions of a movie set are, the deeper the bond that forges within the family who is the cast and crew. For these are memories that remain as vivid to me as if they just occurred.

The African section of filming took us right up to the Christmas holiday, which traditionally means that the company would break for two weeks and resume right after New Year. But in the case of this rejiggered production of
Quest
, our next location for the final section of filming needed to be Canada. And because it was simply too cold to shoot in Northern Ontario until at least the end of March, we were all about to disperse for around three and a half months.

So there I was, riding on this huge crest of starring for 20th Century Fox, a major studio, in an extremely esoteric production that’s going to leave me with nothing less than some really serious bragging rights. And I was feeling good. I was on a high, and I had a few bucks in my pocket. I’m living a little bit, well, not real large, but enough to fly Opal to meet me in London and spend two weeks traveling the UK and then France.

I’m so close with Jean-Jacques by this point that we even went to visit him and spent a couple of nights with him at his country house just outside of Paris. Opal and I have this magical vacation together. Once we were back in the States in about early February I said to her, “Fuck it. Let’s get married.”

“What?”

“Let’s get married, and let’s do it on Valentine’s Day, ’cuz that’s five years to the day from our first date. So it’ll be an easy anniversary to remember.”

She said, “How does one get married on Valentine’s Day when nothing has been planned and it’s February 11?”

“I just want to fucking elope. I just want to get the blessing of your mom and my mom, take my best pal Burton and your favorite sister
or two, go up to some fucking justice of the peace, and come home, married. ’Cuz all it is, is an extension of what we’ve already been doing. We’ve metaphorically been married anyway for five years.”

“Well, you crazy-ass motherfucker, okay, YES! Absolutely.” And so I got the Yellow Pages out for justices of the peace, and there was only one listing. It was in Spring Valley, which is just on the other side of the Tappan Zee Bridge up in Westchester County, but it was supposed to be a chapel with a scenic view of New York’s skyline.

I called the pastor, or whatever the fuck he’s called, to book an appointment, and he said, “Well, I’m very busy on Valentine’s Day, but I can slip you in between 1:30 and 2 o’clock.” We drove up there—it’s fucking freezing. My best buddy, Burton, along with Burton’s girlfriend and Opal’s sisters, Janice and Sharon, came along to watch us get hitched. Once there, it wasn’t so glamorous or quaint; the guy simply performed services on his front lawn in this suburban neighborhood. Fuck, we coulda been in Akron.

I said, “Not for nuthin, but didn’t it say view of the New York skyline in your ad?”

“No, you can see it,” he said, “but you have to get on the roof, and if you hold on to the antennae and lean out as far as you can, you can actually see the skyline of New York. Trust me—it’s gorgeous!”

Well anyway, metaphorically at least, we had this very kind of bucolic country version of this elopement that was as romantic as I possibly could have made it, given the fact that we didn’t even leave time for blood tests and all the other shit you gotta do to get a marriage license. We just made it in by the skin of our teeth so we could make the Valentine’s Day date. But at the time I was romantic enough to say that this was important: I want to do this on Valentine’s Day. What the fuck good is a holiday like that if you can’t commit to the one you love? I also like the symmetry of getting married five years to the date, like the circles I talked about. Because, shit, marriage is really a fucking big casino. It’s not for the faint of heart, and whatever good omen I could put into it, I wanted to do.

About a month later I went up to Owen Sound in northern Ontario. It’s about a hundred miles due north of Toronto. It was a magnificent location, just a stone’s throw from Lake Ontario. The Great Lakes are like fucking oceans. Freezing my ass off, freezing my kishkes off, and shooting the beginning and the end of
Quest for Fire
. All of the stuff that was to depict our tribal life was to be shot at these cave locations. There was the film’s opening, during which we depicted this epic battle between our tribe and that of a warring neighbor and in which our fire is lost. And then there is the film’s end, which consists of our triumphant return, complete with fire back in its cage. And to my surprise and delight, Jean-Jacques had decided to use one of the changes at the end of the script that one time, months before, I had offered him when he was in New York before shooting began.

The end of the movie consisted of a montage of various vignettes of our hero’s tribe now that, through the miracle of fire, life has regained its stability and has, indeed, been advanced. My suggestion to Jean-Jacques was that this little visual exploration include the sitting around the campfire and the regaling of the stories of our quest, almost as if this discovery brought with it the dawn of storytelling, as if the telling of these stories, these sagas, these adventures, were part of our DNA, thus making us more human, and that the story should be like the first fish story ever told—you know, like when you catch a four-pound fish but by the time you tell your buddies about it, that fish is sixteen pounds. Jean-Jacques included that moment in the montage, with the story being told by none other than yours truly. My mom and I were so proud!