I Blame Dennis Hopper (23 page)

Sometimes directors are superheroes trying to save the girl. Sometimes they are the sadistic fellows trying to punish the girl. Again and again and again. I have certainly been at the hands of a director, asked repeatedly to do a scene, over and over again, only to be told that, I
still
didn't have it right. It's times like that I think to myself, Hmm, I wonder who he hates more, his mother or his father?

Sometimes this need for control is not simply to manipulate actors and circumstances but rather to attempt to change the outcome of some event from the past. Director John Frankenheimer was one of the most intimidating people I have ever met, and I learned a lot from him about being fearless. He knew I had ambitions to direct, so he chose me to be part of a select group that saw various cuts of his films. I asked him if we could continue our conversations over lunch, and we did, always at Orsini Osteria Romana, on Pico Boulevard. The first time we had lunch, he said very loudly and very directly, “Illeana, you're going to get much more out of this than I am, so you're going to pick up the check.” After a screening of his TNT film
George Wallace,
one of the HBO executives wanted to remove fifty seconds from a cut, and he wouldn't let them.

“I will walk,” he said. And he meant it.

At lunch, I asked him where he had found the bravery to say something like that, and he said, “Illeana,” and he paused for dramatic emphasis, “my life has been about seconds and inches.” Frankenheimer was both seconds
and
inches away from Bobby Kennedy the night he was shot at the Ambassador Hotel.

My first professional experience working with directors was not on sets. It was working for Peggy Siegal helping to publicize some of the best films of the '80s. For each project, Peggy would assign who would be responsible for handling each member of the cast during the press tour and release of the film. All the other girls wanted to be around the movie stars. There were bidding wars over who would get to work with Kevin Costner or Andy Garcia in
The Untouchables
. Nobody
ever
wanted to work with the director—unless you enjoyed constant runs to CVS to pick up their Maalox or Xanax prescriptions.

The glamour was being with the movie stars. Picking up their jewelry or clothes for events and premieres. Ordering champagne for their suite at the Four Seasons. Sometimes eating their untouched fruit plates after the press junkets. My absolute favorite task was spending an afternoon trying to get the supermodel Paulina Porizkova to attend the premiere of
Moonstruck
with Nicolas Cage because Cher's date was going to be the band Bon Jovi. Yes, the entire band! I told you this was a dream job! Porizkova declined—or rather, “her people” declined on her behalf. She had a boyfriend at the time, Ric Ocasek. Years later I teased her about this when we worked together on
Wedding Bell Blues
. With the director, there were no
Vanity Fair
photo shoots or
Premiere
magazine profiles, but I learned pretty quickly that being around the director was where
all
the real action was.

Working for Peggy Siegal, I probably learned more about the psychology of directors than I ever did on any film set. I understood their moods and sympathized with their pressures, and learned to duck when things went wrong and objects went flying.

People say that directors are egotistical, and they are, but that's also their game face. I had a director privately tell me, once a journalist left the room after reading him aloud a bad review of his film, “If you let them think you care, they will eat you alive.” The funny thing is, I never ever mentioned that I was even an actress or even had aspirations
to
act. I thought of myself as the director's little helper, and it was a role I enjoyed. I also sensed that it was a relief for them be around one person who wanted absolutely nothing from them but to listen and learn.

The directors I worked with assumed I wanted to be behind the scenes, and in some ways, I did. If I had ever said I wanted to be an actress, the relationship would have instantly changed. When I became identified as “an actress,” I lost the power I once had to communicate with directors as if we were equals. For example, after
To Die For
came out, my wonderful agent at the time, Jay Moloney from CAA, said to me, “Illeana, who do you want to meet? Anyone at all. I'll make it happen!”

“Billy Wilder?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes, saying, “Someone that could hire you. Someone that would put you in a movie!”

I said, “Not everything is about getting a job. It's the privilege of meeting someone whose work you admire. Plus I have an in.” Billy had worked with my grandfather on
Ninotchka
. A few days later Jay called me with Billy Wilder's home phone number.

The fact that I can write that I actually called Billy Wilder still gives me a thrill, but I am a little mortified about how the conversation went. Mr. Wilder himself answered the phone. He was friendly but curt: “Young lady, I appreciate very much that you would like to meet me, but I'm in no position at this time to offer you a job.”

“No, I understand that, Mr. Wilder. I was just hoping to talk to you about some of your movies. You wrote
Ninotchka
—my grandfather, Melvyn Douglas, was in it—I would be very curious to know about working with him and also Ernst Lubitsch.”

“Young lady, I am no longer
directing
pictures. You should be spending your time meeting directors that will put you
in
pictures, not
talk
about the pictures.”

There's nothing like being lectured by Billy Wilder. Still, in that one brief phone call, I felt like I got a taste of what it would probably have been like to be directed by Billy Wilder. He would have had very little patience. Sentiment would make him uncomfortable. He was easily frustrated by actresses looking for jobs. I always wondered, If I had identified myself as a director, would the conversation have gone better or made more sense to him?

The next example of how my relationship to directors changed once I became an actress involves an equally impressive director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz. He was charming, witty, engaging—all the things I expected. A good director needs to feel like he is directing. A good actress needs and wants to be directed. It's a symbiotic, often seductive relationship.

So it's probably a good thing I never worked with Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who was rumored to have had love affairs with most of his leading ladies. Joseph Mankiewicz was right up there with Wilder for me. Some of my favorites films of his are the pitch-perfect
All About Eve
,
A Letter to Three Wives
, and the romantic
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
. I had seen Mr. Mankiewicz at a number of Peggy Siegal's premieres, most notably Barry Levinson's
Good Morning, Vietnam
. The after-party was held at the legendary restaurant ‘21', which was prominently featured in
All About Eve
. When I saw Mr. Mankiewicz walking through the very rooms that he had so brilliantly captured in some of that film's most unforgettable scenes, I thought: Once again, movies and real life have collided. We were looping
The Last Temptation of Christ,
and Marty was impressed that I was reading the Mankiewicz biography
Pictures Will Talk,
by Kenneth L. Geist, but he winced and said, “It's not a very flattering book” and brought me one he much preferred,
More About All About Eve
, by Gary Carey with Joseph L. Mankiewicz, along with his own biography,
Scorsese on Scorsese
. Interesting way to court someone. Stop reading the book about the other director. Here's a book about me. Thought Joe was a bastard? What do you think of this guy?

Obviously Marty admired his work, so around the time of
Cape Fear,
I asked Marty if he might reach out to Mr. Mankiewicz and invite him to the premiere, and then we could have dinner with him. One of the things that was endearing about Marty is that whenever I would suggest meeting some of these Hollywood greats, he would suddenly become insecure.

“Why on earth would Joe Mankiewicz want to see
Cape Fear
?”

That's when I'd remind him that first of all, he was doing it for me, and second of all, “Um … you're Martin Scorsese! You're a great director. I'm sure he'd be thrilled to meet you, and see
Cape Fear
!”

Marty was always surprised whenever he found out that another director admired
his
work, too. He looked at Mankiewicz as if he were in another pantheon of Hollywood history.

Well, Mr. Mankiewicz did indeed attend the opening of
Cape Fear
, and a few weeks later, we arranged to meet him and his wife, Rosemary, for dinner at a restaurant he loved near his home in Bedford, New York.

Marty was meeting him as the
director
of
Cape Fear
. Mankiewicz gave him an overall critique of the film, which was very insightful; Marty was humbled by his praise. They talked about cameramen and lighting. Technical things. Then Mankiewicz turned to me, the
actress
. He proceeded to completely dissect my character, Lori Davis. He broke down every choice I had made; he read deeply into my character's psyche. Now, I hadn't even told Marty some of the homework that had gone into my emotional choices, but Mr. Mankiewicz had picked up on little nuances I had played as if he were a psychic. His blue eyes bored into mine. As he spoke it seemed there was no one at the table but the two of us. He wanted to let me know that he, and he alone, understood me. I felt like I was being redirected in
Cape Fear
by Joe L. Mankiewicz himself, which did not go unnoticed by the other director of
Cape Fear
, Martin Scorsese, who was glaring at us across the table.

When he finished, I said, “Mr. Mankiewicz, did all of your leading ladies fall in love with you? Because I think I'm in love with you right now.”

He smiled and said, “All actresses want to be psychoanalyzed. They don't know who they are, so they want to be
told
who they are. If a man can do that, then any woman will fall in love with him.”

He said it in jest, but I thought there was tremendous truth to it. I was certainly putty in his hands, and he knew it. Tell me who I am, Joe? Tell me who you want me to be, Joe?

We took some pictures, and he said he would sign them and send them along to us. A week later they arrived. I am sitting next to Mr. Mankiewicz, and I have a huge smile on my face. So does he!

The caption read, “For Illeana—twenty years ago this pose would be
blurred
!” At first I didn't understand what it meant, but Marty grabbed the picture away from me.

“
Blurred
! How dare he!”

My other director explained it to me.

“
Blurred!
You would be
moving
around! Get it!?”

Marty refused to let me hang up the picture. I loved that he was jealous of an eighty-one-year-old, even if it was Joseph L. Mankiewicz. And what a memorable, sly line written by this witty screenwriter/director to his actress.

Still, looking at the picture, and Marty's reaction, I realized that's all I was to Joe. I was the “actress.” I had lost the ability to communicate one-on-one with directors as I had when I was working for Peggy Siegal. I was conflicted that I would be on only one side of the camera now. Luckily for me, one director changed that. He was the director of
To Die For
: Gus Van Sant.

In the 1990s, Gus Van Sant was the one director with whom I dreamed of working. I loved watching his films, but I could not put into words why they touched me so much. There was an emotional sensibility to which I related but could not place. The movies played like dreams, with haunting images and gritty performances. I remember seeing
Drugstore Cowboy
and thinking, What the hell was that? It was an assault to the senses. It was like listening to Pink Floyd in a darkened bedroom. He had the audacity to take a matinee idol, Matt Dillon, and make him a drug addict, and the artistic vision to film an ending with him where death seemed almost welcoming and romantic, like Juliet's swallowing poison.

Then came
My Own Private Idaho
. It was not so much a film as an experience. I could feel the cold and desperation of these two hustlers. This was a movie that took you somewhere. I could actually smell this film. The embers in a fire, the dirty leather coats that smelled of smoke, the old houses and the open fields. Again, I'm going to say images. Images set to music. Houses falling from the sky. The safety of the home smashing to bits on the ground.

Van Sant's
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
may not have been well received critically, but the images and color of that film, and the boldness and daring of the filmmaker, stayed with me. This was a director who was part Nick Ray, part Warhol, part Bergman. Gus Van Sant? Was he even American? I wondered. When I met Gus at my audition for
To Die For
, he was quiet and completely different from what I had expected. Soft-spoken and unassuming. He was from Connecticut, for God's sake. Grew up in a town very near me. He would go on to be nominated twice for an Academy Award, for having directed the quietly brilliant
Good Will Hunting
and the historically powerful
Milk
. His directing style
appears
to be simple, and that may be part of his genius, because the emotional depth of his characters is boundless.

But this was 1994. He was directing
To Die For
, based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Maynard. I had dreamed of working with him, and now it was happening. I was playing the part of Janice, a professional ice skater and the sister of Larry, played by Matt Dillon.