I'll Scream Later (No Series) (10 page)

I
HEADED TO
M
IKE’S
house with a heavy heart. Dark clouds and lightning and a drenching summer downpour only made me feel worse. He was still my boyfriend, though on the flight back from L.A. I knew that whether I got the role or not my life was changing forever and in ways that wouldn’t include Mike.

Four years, dreams of kids and houses and loving each other forever were washing away in the gutters. Everything about how I thought my life was going to turn out had suddenly become obsolete. But before I could look to the future, I had to resolve my past.

Walking into Mike’s house, I had no idea what I was going to say. He was in his bedroom, still sleeping, such a beautiful boy. I woke him up and he looked at me and I guess my face said everything.

“It’s over. I know, it’s over,” he said, tears streaming down his face.

It was so, so sad, as if my heart were breaking into a million pieces. It was still pouring when I ran to my car. I just had to get out of there, couldn’t stand to see the pain I’d caused etched in his face. Couldn’t stand the tears.

I pulled out of the driveway and gunned the car—it skidded out of control, barely missing a tree that would have destroyed the car and probably me.

The car rolled to a stop and I dropped my head on the steering wheel, took a breath, and cried and cried. Took another breath—and cried again. Took another breath. Debated going back in. Tried to think of anything I could say to Mike to make it better. But I couldn’t.

I drove away, slowly this time, the rain coming down in sheets, my face wet with tears. That was the last time I saw him, my first true love, for a while. Even now, every time “Just the Way You Are” plays, I always think of Mike—without fail—because that was our song.

I
T WAS BACK
to a waiting game for me. I was hoping for a call, from the studio, from Bill.

Not long before, my family had left Morton Grove for Northbrook, a more affluent suburb. The house was nice. I’m sure technically nicer than Morton Grove, but it never felt like home. I was nineteen, but adrift in my life and so uncertain about my future that I was content to live at home for now.

About a week after I got back from L.A. I got a phone call from my agent, Harrise Davidson, who had a TTY.

“I’m talking to Paramount.”

“What are they saying?”

We must have gone back and forth four or five times with questions. Each time the phone rang both my mom and I would jump.

In one of the calls Harrise asked, “How does $50,000 sound?”

Here I am, not yet twenty, having had nothing but minimum-wage jobs and my one short stint at $300 a week for the run of the play. So $50,000 sounded very, very good. I’m thinking,
That’s a lot of money.
I quickly said okay.

The next time Harrise called it was with one final question: “Would you do a nude scene?”

“I’m an actress, so, yes.”

Two minutes later she called back: “You got it!”

I looked up and my mother was standing by the doorway with an address book…weeping. Ready to call everybody.

“I got it! I got it!”

I had no sense of how my life would change. I didn’t even think about whether this was just a one-shot chance or if it would lead to an acting career. But my mind started working overtime. It was starting to feel real. I want to see the script. What am I going to pack?

Then I got the second call I’d been waiting for. From Bill.

“Congratulations. Can’t wait to see you.”

R
EHEARSALS FOR THE
film would start in August of 1985 in Saint John, New Brunswick. Most of the film was shot in the village of Rothesay just outside Saint John at one of the local landmarks, the Rothesay College School. It was a beautiful old campus. Victorian-style buildings, sitting right on a bay, which I found could generate icy winds even in warmer months—freezing me to the bone during shooting on more than one occasion.

Randa wanted to get the cast—a mix of hearing and Deaf actors—in sync before shooting began. The technical considerations of filming are considerable when not all of the actors will be speaking. It was a logistical challenge—or nightmare—depending on the day. She had blocked out three weeks of rehearsals to make sure there were no nightmares.

Walking into the hotel where the production was putting us up, it started to feel real that I was actually going to be in this movie, complete with a starring role.

My mom had come along and planned to spend a couple of days helping me settle in. When we walked in, Bill was waiting for me. I was nineteen and had never been away from home or my family except for short trips with the Traveling Hands troupe and vacations with Liz’s family, which was almost like being at home.

My mom couldn’t believe this new life I was stepping into, and I think she was torn between happiness for me and a little bit of envy that she would be leaving and I would be staying.

The front desk handed me a stack of bills—I didn’t understand what it was for until Bill explained it to me. So I was introduced to
per diem cash—I would be getting $800 a week in spending money in addition to what I was being paid for the movie.

I was in heaven. It only got better. My mom and I ate dinner together that night—fresh lobster caught off Saint John’s shores earlier that day, food of the gods!

Bill and I had seen each other one other time between the screen test and the start of production. Liz and I went to Los Angeles in July of ’85 for the Deaf Olympics, and Bill was in town. We arranged to meet.

He was looking for us and we were looking for him in the crowds there that day. I first caught sight of him behind the wheel of a convertible. He looked like a movie star. I was trying to play it cool, looking casual, eating a peach. Liz and I jumped into the car and spent the rest of the afternoon tooling around the city, just hanging out. I wasn’t sure where it was going with us, but something was definitely happening, and it was only growing in intensity.

We bumped into Randa, too. She’d stopped by to check out the Deaf Olympics activities. A couple of actors who had auditioned for the movie and been passed over were there, too—a few of them definitely gave me the cold shoulder.

Some in the Deaf acting community had been incensed that I had been cast as Sarah. It’s a small, close-knit group, and news, good or bad, travels fast. Major roles for Deaf actors in big studio movies didn’t come along every day. To make matters worse—at least from their point of view—I came from nowhere, unlike many of them who’d been toiling in theater for many years.

The community of Deaf actors gave me no support, no encouragement, no words of wisdom or welcome. I would face this difficult pattern over the years. One moment the Deaf community at large would embrace me. I quickly became their most visible emissary to the hearing world—a role I never asked for, but tried to take on with grace. The next moment they would castigate me for some perceived slight—most often it was that I wasn’t as “Deaf” as they wanted me to be.

Whether it was the Deaf or the hearing community, I’ve always fought against anyone defining me, stereotyping me, limiting me
because of my deafness. At the same time, I’ve tried to be a strong advocate for Deaf issues—working endlessly for closed-captioning and educational opportunities for Deaf children.

But I decided early on that I had to live my life in the best way I knew how. I had strong opinions and a way of living in both the Deaf and the hearing worlds that made some Deaf activists angry. But I was raised that way, and I wasn’t then, or ever, going to apologize for that.

T
HANK
G
OD FOR
Randa. She had been thinking a lot about how to get me where I needed to be to give her the performance she wanted, the one she believed I was capable of. If I couldn’t count on support from the Deaf community, I had a champion in her.

Randa says, “I started working with Marlee in different ways than I normally would. I showed her a film called
Carmen,
by a great Spanish director. It’s the story of the opera
Carmen
told through a flamenco group.

“There is fantastic emotion in the dancing and the woman, her carriage, there is such a sense of pain and pride—the way she carried her past in her body and her face. I thought it was a great model for Marlee to use as she thought about how she would play Sarah.

“It was our own private work together. I wore earplugs when we screened it together because we had the sound up so loud—we were working in a physical way to understand the emotions, and the physical manifestation of the maturity and age that Marlee didn’t have in her own life.

“The two of us had a sign we created for Carmen, it became a shorthand for us during shooting. A way I could say, ‘Remember that part of your character, remember that part of yourself.’”

I
BEGAN TRYING
to sketch out a blueprint of my character, and Randa and I kept talking things through as rehearsals progressed. Sarah was beginning to take shape in my mind. I knew her moods, I could feel her anguish and pain, her passion.

I made notes on the pages of the script—cryptic references to
bad moments in my life that I wanted to use as subtext for how I would handle specific scenes. In one, I tried to imagine my mother’s world as a child—she had been deserted by her father just as Sarah had been.

I was also struck by some of Sarah’s dialogue. I made a note to myself on one page:
This is a Deaf school, no one knows hearing idioms!
I didn’t know the idioms either.

I crossed through a line I was supposed to sign, which read, “But I’m Deaf,” and replaced it with simply “Me Deaf,” much truer to the stripped-down, direct way that you communicate in sign language.

Jim Carrington, who’d worked with me through my screen test, was back again on set. Another Randa touch. She says, “I knew Marlee needed someone to prepare her for what to expect day to day. To be able to concentrate with a hundred people on the set.”

Jim had the bluest eyes I have ever seen—reminded me a little of the way Tim Curry looked in
Rocky Horror Picture Show
—and was as kind as he was demanding. I carry his insights and some of his techniques with me even now.

They gave me my own trailer, which I learned was standard operating procedure, and I started to meet all the many people tied to the production. I thought it was like one giant party. I didn’t begin to understand what their jobs were, didn’t know what the union was, that everyone there had a job and a specific role.

I spent about half a day one day with wardrobe, and I remember not understanding at first why it was taking so long. There were at least five of us—the director, the producer, and the head of wardrobe and her sister, they were French girls. I was trying on a variety of clothes, and they were explaining which clothes went with which scenes and why. “Oh, okay, this is what I wear here, and this is what I wear there.”

When we got to the swimming scene, the sisters said, giggling, “And in this scene you wear no clothes.”

“What? No clothes?” Then I remembered the question my agent had asked me about doing a nude scene. “Ah, no clothes, okay.” Woo-hoo!

Children of a Lesser God
was a crash course in moviemaking, and I wanted to understand everything about it. I watched, I asked questions; I tried to be a giant sponge and absorb everything I could. It was a combination of my natural curiosity and a desire to never be the naive one again.

What I really wanted to do, too, was learn everybody’s name. In the years since, I have made it a habit to get to know the crew as well as the other actors. You’re just as likely to find me eating with the crew as in my trailer. I never forget they are a significant part of the production; they work long hours for not a lot of pay, and they are always part of my success.

Children of a Lesser God
was the only film on which I would manage that feat—two hundred cast and crew, and before we wrapped, I knew the name of every one of them! You all rock!

W
ORKING ON THAT
first film taught me a lot about the nuances I would need to learn to survive and grow as an actor who was also Deaf.

My first scene in the film is at night; I am sleeping. A storm is blowing up, rain starts pelting, a shutter outside my window starts banging, again and again, the curtains rise and fall with the wind. It’s a beautiful scene crammed with technical demands; among them, it calls for me to be perfectly still, calm, undisturbed in my sleep.

It was a difficult day for the production—multiple components needed to behave just so—the shutters, the rain, the curtains, the wind, and of course me.

It might sound easy, but when my eyes are closed, I’m cut off. I don’t know what’s happening, and when you are awake, but unable to use the senses that you do have, that you rely on to fill in the blanks, it can be maddening.

Improvision, too, became a new skill that I could put in my acting arsenal, one that Randa used a lot throughout the production. It requires you to trust yourself and your director and just dive in. For me, the most challenging moment was describing the sound of the waves.

I was struggling and Randa asked me to think of how I would describe it if I didn’t know sign language. She wanted something expressive and sensual. Okay, how would I communicate without talking
and
without signing?

I stopped worrying about how and let my mind drift into feelings. I thought about how it feels to be in the ocean, to feel the power of the waves, their rhythm, their movement. I closed my eyes and tried to get lost in the waves.

It was scary and exhilarating at the same time as I stood there and tried to take all those feelings and make them concrete—physical. Using my hands, I pushed up on my body, again and again, the way waves would. I dropped my head back as if they were washing over me.

Randa was pleased with the way the scene was working now. She recalls, “It was such a sensual moment, Marlee has such a wonderful physicality. When she describes the wave, it’s such a brave moment. She just put herself out there and went for it. There is a kind of internal freedom she has when it comes to using her body. I saw it again in the pool, she is very at ease with herself.”

B
EING ON A
movie set, you quickly learn—despite being part of an industry that prizes stick-thin figures—that food is never more than a few steps away. I had never been around so much free food in my life!

A scene in a restaurant featured a salad bar, with a really fabulous spread. I went over and picked out a couple of things to munch on.

The food was so, so good that I went back again, but the prop master said gently and nicely. “Hey, Marlee, if you’re hungry, craft services is right outside.”

I cringed and blushed. I’d been eating prop food. Note to self—prop food is not to be eaten just for fun. Prop food is working food.

Ah, but there is always the magic of the craft services table, changing throughout the day, always filled with the tastiest treats. One of my favorite things was to have a bagel topped with cream cheese and tomatoes. Simple, I know. But I would create the most beautifully cream-cheesed bagels in the world; they were, and I do not exaggerate here, works of art.

One day I was midcreation when Randa came up to me and literally lifted the bagel, that beautiful bagel, right out of my hand. She recalls, “The wardrobe people had come to me and said they were having to let out all of Marlee’s clothes. Soon it was going to turn into a problem. She was gaining weight and they said you’ve got to stop it.

“Right after that conversation, I went in search of Marlee. And I found her, at the craft services table, lovingly layering cream cheese on this bagel. I hated to do it, but I walked over and took the bagel and said, ‘Enough.’”

During the production I kept gaining, and I noticed Randa kept shrinking. I guess we each dealt with stress in a different way.

But learning to control my urge to swing by the craft services table would turn out to be useful for many years to come. Thanks, Randa!

One vice I picked up on set was smoking. I have Randa to thank for that, too.

My character, Sarah, had to smoke, actually quite a lot. Though I had spent years smoking pot, I never smoked cigarettes. If anything I avoided them because my mother smoked and I would always give her grief about it.

“Can’t I just pretend?”

“No, you have to smoke, it won’t look authentic otherwise.”

At first I would get dizzy and nauseated; once I threw up. The taste was so different from pot, with no mellow after-haze either. But I got used to it, then addicted to it, and ended up smoking Marlboro Lights—Bill’s brand. He smoked a couple of packs a day, and by the end of production I had a pack-a-day habit that I wouldn’t lose until years later. So gross. I’m proud to say I don’t smoke anymore, ever.

The good news is that I have a strong constitution. I rarely get sick. But at one point I was overtaken by the worst cold. I had a fever, I couldn’t breathe, I could barely stand. I guess my body was reacting to too many hours shooting outside in the winds off the bay.

That day was the poker-game scene. I’d never played poker, hadn’t played cards much as a kid. Did not know how to shuffle a deck. So I got a crash course in both. Sarah was supposed be a surprise whiz at poker.

With a box of Kleenex and teeth gritted, I got through the day, so glad when it was over. Then I remember seeing the final cut of the film, watching that scene, the moment when I masterfully shuffle the deck…. Hey, wait, those aren’t my hands!

S
OMETIMES THE STRANGEST
things will remind you of home when you’re in the middle of a long production and missing all the comforts and safety of your very own space. Two things did that for me in
Children of a Lesser God
.

When I saw the U.S. dollars on the poker table, sick as I was, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. It just felt so good to see those dollar bills after being in Canada for the longest time. No offense, Canada. Such a beautiful country!

The other was the way they dressed the house that Sarah’s mother lived in. It was one of the nicest touches and meant the world to my mother and dad in particular. The walls were filled with my baby pictures—even one of my mom holding me as a child.

When I heard Piper Laurie had been cast as my mother, I remember thinking,
Oh my God, that’s Carrie’s mother! Will there be blood?

Seriously, I was excited to be working with her. Piper was nothing but gracious, professional, patient, and beautiful.