I'll Scream Later (No Series) (11 page)

W
HEN
I
LOOK
at
Children of a Lesser God
now, each scene has its own story.

In some, Randa is the main character—a sure-handed director guiding, demanding, pushing, nurturing all of us through incredibly difficult and emotional moments.

In some, it’s John Seale, our brilliant director of cinematography, who has gone on to do such incredible work, including winning an Oscar for
The English Patient
. In others, I think of the prop master, or my acting coach, the other Deaf kids in the cast, whom I loved, who were all great.

One particular scene sticks in my mind when I think of John Seale. For the scenes we shot in the pool when I’m completely nude, the crew was kept to an absolute minimum. Cameras were above water and another below. In one complicated scene, I had to dive off the edge of the pool and over the underwater camera. Even more difficult, I needed to do it as smoothly as I could, hitting the water with minimum splash.

I dived over and over, trying to make the entry as clean as possible. I thought I was doing a great job until John motioned at me and said we needed to talk for a second. I pulled a towel around me and walked over, dripping. He hesitated, searching for just the right words.

“Marlee, next time you dive, uummm. I need you to try to keep your legs together.” He waited to see if I understood.

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! I blushed crimson red. Every time I dived in, legs apart, I’d apparently been giving the camera operator an X-rated show!

The nude scenes in the pool were physically demanding and technically difficult with cameras and lights above and below the water. We shot for three days with me spending much of it nude and submerged in ninety-degree water. It was hellish.

In the first scene, I’m swimming alone, trying to move through the water as smoothly as possible. When I was underwater, I was to make as few bubbles as possible, all without it looking as if I were holding my breath. We shot it over and over to get both the physicality and the mood of it.

This critical scene spoke to my comfort in isolation, to the one place I could feel free of all of the limitations of the world and my deafness. Randa was persistent in getting it right, and I look at it now and know she was right to keep pushing. The scene is cinematically beautiful and speaks volumes without a sound. And few bubbles either.

B
UT MANY OF
the scenes I’m in are defined in my memory by whether Bill and I were fighting that day.

I kept my hotel room, but I spent most of my time at the house the studio had rented for him. We made amazing, mind-blowing love. And we fought. And we worked. I know there were other things—quiet times, ordinary times—but when I watch the movie, my mind swings between those two poles—love and anger, anger and love—a new variation on an old theme I’d been raised with.

Almost everything we did together had an intensity, an electricity, that was searing, in both good and bad ways. I
knew
I was more alive than I had ever been. Life, emotion, radiated off us. It was as if we were our own force field.

On the screen that combustion would bring out some of the best work either of us would ever do. Offscreen, well, that’s another story. Bill once said we were two matchsticks who should never be burning at the same time. In that he was right.

O
NE OF OUR
early blowups came on the day we shot the scene that shows Sarah and James really interacting for the first time.

As it opens, James spots Sarah mopping the floor. He’s in
trigued, motions her into his classroom, one littered with crumpled paper. She assumes he wants her to clean up, but that’s not it at all—James is intrigued by this beautiful, distant young woman. He begins trying to convince her that he can teach her, help her, something she’s not interested in.

The scene is supposed to be filled with that tension of a new relationship when both of you are testing the waters, trying to figure each other out. As it’s written, it also has humor, sarcasm, and a bit of whimsy.

We were both so angry that when we started shooting the scene, the mood in the room was lethal. In this situation, sometimes after one or two takes everything just relaxes. The tension in the room rolls away.

Not so on this day. Randa eventually had to play referee: “You here, and you there.” The production was shut down for about an hour while she first talked to me, then Bill.

Only later would I begin to believe that Bill often ignited the fights specifically to make a scene like this work. He and Randa argued intensely and publicly throughout the shoot, too. But she just chalked it up to his process, knowing that after a few takes, actually usually around take seven or eight, like a cloud in a stiff wind, the anger would blow away.

For me, it was hard not to take things personally. We were immersed in both work and a new relationship, and it felt to me as if the storm clouds kept hanging around.

In the scene where Sarah and James are on their first date—dinner in an intimate restaurant that has a jukebox—people are soon up, dancing on the small dance floor. We’d had a huge fight, screaming at each other, earlier that day.

Most of the time I can’t even remember what we were fighting about, it was so inconsequential, but on this day it was about whether I could adopt an adorable orange tabby kitten that was hanging around the craft services truck. I asked the craft services guy if I could have the kitty. Bill thought I was rude to ask.

First Sarah dances alone, slowly, sensually, eyes closed, moving to the music. Then we dance a slow dance together—I’m supposed
to be tentative, not comfortable with the closeness. That was an easy place to get to for me; I didn’t want to look at him, did not want to let my body relax into his. At one point I rested my face against his shoulder to keep from seeing his face. The texture of the moment is just right.

When I walked into my trailer after we were finished, I saw a litter box, cat toys, and a dish. It was his way of saying he was sorry. We named the kitten Otis—
she
went on to have eight kittens!

So it was another bad day, good day, great scene.

Another of the great-scene bad days began when James has come in search of Sarah. He’s standing in a trench coat at the edge of the pool—leaning toward her as he talks. Gravity takes over and he falls in—it is the first time he and Sarah make love. There was the water to tread, the underwater camera, a shoe floating to the bottom, his clothes being pulled off. Extremely difficult physically to choreograph.

At one point I am to open my arms so he can come into them; we embrace. I wrapped my legs around him to help myself balance and to keep from floating away from him as we worked through the scene. It’s one of the most natural things to do when you are embracing someone in water.

But Bill became incensed, yelling at me that I was coming on to him. I was shocked. Could not believe it. I had all the intimacy with him I needed offscreen. Did he need the fight to get to that place of vulnerability he needed for that scene? I wondered.

Our other huge fight on set was during a scene when we were making love—again he believed I was doing more than just acting. I kept trying to figure out his anger—was it because he was unsettled by our connection? Afraid our lives offscreen were seeping into our roles on-screen? It all seemed so irrational to me.

Randa came to believe that it was all just part of Bill’s process, that he needed conflict, some kind of resistance to fight through before he could get to the place he needed to. She said later that she thought about pulling me aside, telling me not to take it personally. She never did, but I was too emotionally drawn into Bill’s world then to have listened anyway.

O
NE SCENE NEAR
the end of the film is particularly difficult for me to watch. We argue, then make awful, violent love.

We’d had an equally awful fight before we got to the set that day. One of our worst. Again, I have no idea what the issue was, I just know it was probably the most volatile fight we’d had during filming.

In that scene after we’ve made love, we’re on the floor and I roll away from him. My dress is pushed above my knees, and down my left leg are a series of fresh bruises. You can see them if you watch that scene now. I never said anything that day, wondering if the makeup crew would notice, would try to cover them. Wondering if Randa would say anything. But no one did. It’s as if no one sees.

In the fall of ’85 I was trying to understand so many things all at once. Everything was new, including Bill, the first adult relationship I’d ever had. My youth frustrated him—over our nearly two years together he would say again and again, “You are so young, you don’t know anything about life yet.” I was never sure what he wanted me to do about that.

I think, too, that I was unlike anyone Bill had been with before. I was a fighter, a scrapper, a tough Chicago girl who wasn’t afraid to mix it up to survive and navigate this world. If he had expected me to shrink and fold if he yelled at me, I must have been a surprise.

A
FTER
C
HILDREN OF A
L
ESSER
G
OD
wrapped, I moved to New York with Bill, into his apartment on Central Park West. On the eighth floor, it had huge banks of windows and sweeping views of the park that could just take your breath away.

We started setting up a life together full of hope and passion, still learning about each other, determined to try to make this relationship work.

He was extremely sensitive to any barriers presented by my deafness, immediately adjusting the house to accommodate my needs—lights that would flash throughout when the buzzer rang; a TTY machine for the phone—and he kept working to improve his signing, though we relied more on my ability to read lips and talk.

We were also trying to keep everything below the radar. Bill hated publicity and the invasion that meant into his private life. I was just an invisible girl from Chicago at the time, no one outside the cast of the film and the studio knew who I was.

Not long after we moved in together, Bill had agreed to a
People
magazine article, to talk about his role in
Kiss of the Spider Woman,
which the studio hoped would earn him an Oscar nomination. The interview and photo shoot were going to take place at his apartment. He needed me to disappear for a day.

I was new to the city, had not gotten close to navigating it on my own. What to do with Marlee?

Around that same time, the London premiere of
Kiss
was rapidly approaching. Bill wanted me with him, that was going to be our coming-out party, and had his assistant Robin go in search of a London-based sign-language interpreter to be with me during our time there.

Coked out in New York City

In a phone call that would change my life, Robin was eventually referred to New York University, which sent its Deaf students to England for a summer program each year. Surely they could recommend someone.

At the time, Jack Jason was an NYU graduate student in the film department. His parents were both Deaf, so he’d grown up signing, and he often picked up extra work interpreting for the university’s Deaf students. The person who fielded Robin’s call knew Jack and his background, and Jack was in the office at the time.

Jack remembers, “Robin, Bill’s assistant, explained that they were looking for an interpreter for Marlee in London and could I recommend any there. I told them no, that they would need to bring their own because England has a different sign-language system than the U.S. He asked for a recommendation, and I offered to send them my résumé.

“When Robin called back, he said, ‘Mr. Hurt would prefer to have a woman.’ And so I did something a little sneaky—I gave them the names of three women who I knew were all out of town. As it turned out, Marlee got an ear infection and wasn’t going to be able to fly anyway, but Robin called me back and asked if I could meet Marlee at the apartment. It was December second, 1985.”

That day Bill and I were just walking back to the apartment when Jack arrived. I saw this petite man with about two hundred layers of clothing on. He was wearing a suit and a tie with a sweater underneath, and a long winter overcoat down to his calves. It was way too big for him.

He says he had no idea what we were going to be doing so he was trying to dress for any possible occasion.

Clothes aside, the memory that stays with me the most is how well he signed.

He was so fast I had to ask him if he was Deaf. I’d never seen a hearing person who could sign like that. Then I asked him three totally politically incorrect questions.

Number one: “Are you Jewish?” Number two: “Are you gay?” Number three: “Do you smoke weed?” He said yes to one of the three—he was Jewish. Why did I ask? I have no idea—so dumb!

We got into the car Bill had gotten for the day, and while he did the
People
interview, Jack and I drove around Manhattan. I had no idea where I was and Jack asked me what I wanted to do. Shopping was always good entertainment.

So he took me to Trump Tower Mall, a lavish indoor mall on Fifth Avenue. I guess he assumed since I was with a movie star that would be to my taste. I saw it and said, “No, no, no, this is not for me.”

I was more interested in learning about him and his Deaf parents than shopping, but Jack was on a mission to make shopping work.

Next we hit Bloomingdale’s. I had never heard of Bloomingdale’s either, and after I was doused by the perfume ladies spraying anyone walking by, all I wanted to do was escape. I’m from Chicago, that’s my point of reference. It was still pretty pricey and I didn’t know if I wanted to spend that much. At that time in my life, my fashion sense was, give me T-shirts and jeans and I’m happy.

Then Jack, who was so patient that day and many days since, thought of Macy’s. Another store I’d never heard of. But at Macy’s I fell in love. It reminded me of Marshall Field’s back home.

At the end of the day, Jack dropped me off back at the apartment and I asked for his phone number. I needed someone I could talk to, someone I could sign to. We started seeing each other a lot after that. He was my only friend in New York.

I’d bombard him with questions about his childhood, his parents. We’d meet for lunch, for dinner. There were no barriers to communication between us; it opened up the world there for me. Before long, Jack asked if I wanted to see a movie.

“I can’t. I can’t read the lips on the screen and there’s no captioning.”

“Oh. I’ll interpret.”

“What, you’ll sit up there next to the screen?”

“No, silly, next to you.”

So we went to see
The Color Purple,
the three of us—me, Bill, and Jack. By that time, Jack was also tutoring Bill in signing.

During the film, I was amazed and fascinated by Jack’s ability, how he was able to deliver the subtext of the movie as well as the dialogue.

It was a long movie, and at the end he was crying while interpreting it all for me. I couldn’t believe he could do that. I thought to myself that he had to be the best interpreter in the world.

Jack and I have worked together now for almost twenty-four years, and it is an extremely complicated relationship. He interprets for me, and he runs my production company. He develops projects and generally is the middleman between me and the public. If you’ve seen me on a talk show or an awards show, generally the person by my side explaining what I’m saying, or thinking or feeling, is Jack.

He is also like family. Jack’s been there for my wedding and the births of my children. He’s like an old shoe. We’re comfortable. If we haven’t seen each other in a week or a month, it’s like old friends catching up.

To the business he brings creativity and can be ambitious, ag
gressive on my behalf. He brings good ideas, large and small—he’s created movie scripts for us to produce, and it was his idea for me to sign the national anthem at the Super Bowl in 1993 when Garth Brooks sang, and again at the Super Bowl in 2007.

In fact, he even fought to have me on-screen with Garth. When Jack was told by one of the show’s producers that Garth would be center stage, but I would be offscreen on the edge of the stage, he was incensed. He found Garth and told him what the producers intended to do. Garth had a word with them, and suddenly I was standing right next to Garth.

While Jack’s always protective of me, usually a good thing, sometimes he’s overly protective. Not so good. In fact, that trait is often where we’ve had the most conflict. In the early days, if he didn’t agree with what I wanted to tell someone, he’d refuse to interpret. Here’s a classic example.

An executive at a big studio had done something that really ticked me off. I knew him and wanted to talk to him right then. We were in my Porsche at the time, I was driving, and Jack was in the passenger seat. I had a speakerphone and told Jack I wanted to call the executive. No time like the present!

Jack said, “No, I won’t interpret.” He was worried about the politics of it.

I remember we were on Wilshire and I said, “Give me the number.”

“Fine,” he said, then crossed his arms across his chest—in case I’d forgotten that he wasn’t going to give me any help on this call at all.

I dialed the number, it rang, a secretary answered. I said, “Hi, this is Marlee Matlin.” She understood me and said, “He’s not in, may I take a message?” There was silence and Jack glared at me. I glared back at him. Finally he interpreted what she’d said, but he wouldn’t speak for me.

So I said, “Please tell so-and-so, ‘Shame on him,’ and thank you very much,” and hung up.

I looked over at Jack and said, “You’re fired.”

“Marlee, the car is moving, I’m not getting out.”

“Okay, so, where do you want to go for lunch?”

Jack was appalled. But I felt better. As far as I was concerned, it was finished—my beef with the studio exec and my disagreement with Jack.

But later I told Jack he could not deny me access to communication, ever. To me that was just incredibly unfair, taking advantage of my being Deaf to force an issue. And he agreed, though we’ve had this fight a few more times over the years.

Our relationship is such a combination of professional and personal, and we are always trying to figure out where to draw the line. At the beginning, it was about me—I wanted him to support me, agree with me about everything. I can be strong and stubborn, and Jack just can’t handle it sometimes.

But over the years, he’s gotten stronger and I’ve seen a lot of changes in him, in good ways—and hopefully I’ve changed, too.

We can absolutely crack each other up, and at times people have probably thought we were crazy, laughing until tears were streaming down our faces. Show us a photo of a shih tzu in a bow and a tutu and we’re gone.

We’ve also had huge fights along the way, and I’m sure he’s come close to leaving a couple of times. That would be the saddest day for me. I cannot imagine another Jack who would put up with me, who would understand me so well and who knows so much.

But as angry as he’s gotten, Jack always says, “This is for life.” And I believe him.

D
ECEMBER
1985
WAS
one of the lowest points in my life. The fights with Bill kept escalating, and I had no idea how to deal with them. Liz whisked me away for a Club Med vacation in Ixtapa, and I started to feel stronger with Liz by my side and the sun on my back. But those beach memories died all too quickly.

I flew to Spain to meet Bill in Málaga. We were to meet his father, who lived there. One evening, after we’d fought through lunch and as the argument raged on, I felt my will to live just slip away. I felt lost, helpless. I realized I didn’t care whether I lived or died. As we walked away from the restaurant, I walked out into the street,
dazed. The screech of tires, the smell of burned rubber, the blaring horns, all the chaos was muffled. I couldn’t hear it, but more important, I couldn’t feel it.

Liz and me, Ixtapa, 1985

Then I saw a huge truck barreling toward me; the driver had no escape route. I knew if I didn’t move, it would be the last thing I would ever do in my life. In that split second, something inside me changed and I darted out of the way. It is a hard thing to admit that I was ever that low, ever so much on the brink. But I know that no matter how tough or how strong you are, the moment might come when you wonder not if you can make it, but whether you want to make it. I’m so very glad I chose life.