My Mother Was Nuts (26 page)

He had developed
Big
with writers Gary Ross and Anne Spielberg, Steven’s sister. Steven had briefly thought of making it with Harrison Ford in the lead. But the project had been sitting on Jim’s desk. I read the draft and liked the story. Twelve-year-old Josh Baskin can’t get the girl he likes; she’s interested in an older boy who can drive. He
wishes he were bigger and wakes up the next morning as a thirty-year-old. He gets a job at FAO Schwarz, rises up the corporate ladder, and becomes the object of affection of a beautiful executive. It was a theme that everyone could identify with:
When I’m big I’m gonna
…

To make the high concept work, I wanted it to be real and believable. The biggest challenge would be casting the lead. I didn’t have the luxury of pre-production in
Jumpin’ Jack Flash
and now that I did, I wanted to get it right. I went straight to the three big box-office stars at the time: Tom Hanks, Kevin Costner, and Dennis Quaid. All of them passed. Everyone passed.

I tried a different approach. I looked for the kid who would be Josh’s best friend, and I picked Jared Rushton. He had the most spunk of those I saw. He worked well as I brought in actors, including Sean Penn, who was terrific but too young, and Andy Garcia, who was also great, though one of the studio executives said, “We don’t want to spend eighteen million on a kid who grows up to be Puerto Rican.”

That was how they talked.

“He’s Cuban,” I said.

I also read Gary Busey, who had the energy of a child, but I didn’t think he could pull off playing an adult. John Travolta was dying to do it, but at the time he was box office poison and the studio didn’t want him. I started to get worried. Despite not having a lead actor, we were in pre-production in New York. I met with Robert Greenhut, one of our executive producers. This was our first film together. He was a slick line producer who had come up through the ranks and done all of Woody Allen’s films.

I had an idea and asked him to think about working on a rewrite of a couple scenes. In TV, all the producers wrote. I assumed he did, too. He set me straight. He didn’t write; he managed the production. I apologized, explaining that I was still learning about movies. But he still had excellent ideas, and he turned into an ally and confidant
when I decided to take my search for a lead actor in a different direction.

I went to Robert De Niro. Bobby—or Bobby D. as I called him—was in the middle of making
The Untouchables
, playing Al Capone. Although I knew he didn’t ordinarily read other material when he was in the middle of a project, I called him anyway. That’s where I’m not at all shy or hesitant. I will call anyone. What’s the worst they can say?

“Bobby, there’s a script,” I said. “I want you to read it, see if you like it.”

I got him the material and called him back.

“Did you read it?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think?

“I like it.”

It turned out that he wanted to make a commercial film. He had done all of Marty Scorsese’s movies, but hadn’t broken out in a film the whole family could watch. I told Jim and Scott Rudin, who was running production at the studio, that De Niro was interested. They were surprised and somewhat intrigued. They were also skeptical. Besides having a hard time envisioning him in the role, they’d heard stories about him. They told me to get him to commit. The way they said it was like a challenge.

I called Bobby.

“What do I tell them when they ask me?” I asked. “Do you want to do it or not? I’ve got to give them an answer.”

“Yeah, tell them I’ll do it,” he said.

I hung up.

I had Bobby.

I told Jim and Scott, and I guess word spread. The next day I flew to Los Angeles to go to an event celebrating Paramount’s seventy-fifth anniversary and posed for a photo with everyone who ever worked at the studio. Word had spread about Bobby D. and a handful of actors
who had turned me down, including Kevin Costner, now asked about
Big
. Bobby had given me validity.

As work began on the script, Bobby told me to look at his movies and tell him what I wanted and didn’t want. What I wanted was the energy he had in
Mean Streets
in the scene when he was first in the bar and coming out around the car. That’s exactly what I got when he came to my house one day. I got him on tape with Jared. They skateboarded, shot baskets, and rode bicycles in my driveway. Bobby doesn’t give you much until the cameras are on. Jared yelled, “Come on, De Niro. Move it!”

As word got out, actresses called to read with him. It was exciting. I didn’t know exactly where the process was leading, in terms of the script, but it was moving in a good direction. I would have paid to see Bobby dance on piano keys.

Barry didn’t want Bobby, though. I said, “Counter me.” He said, “How about Warren Beatty?” To me, Warren was the same as De Niro, but different. He had already done something similar in
Heaven Can Wait
. But the two of us had dinner in New York and then we went up to my apartment. I asked if he would listen to me if I directed him. In the nicest way, he said no.

Well, that was thrilling. Why bother?

At least Warren was being honest. That’s all I ever ask. Just tell me the truth. I’ll deal with it. But I can’t deal unless I know the truth.

Bobby was taken aback when I told him the studio had wanted me to meet with Warren. It’s never easy to hear that you aren’t someone’s top choice, even at his level. But that was only a small part of what became an even bigger problem. An article came out in the papers about how much money Chevy Chase, John Candy, and other people were paid for movies, and all were getting a hell of a lot more than Fox was going to pay Bobby.

To be blunt, they were going to pay him shit and they weren’t budging. They just didn’t want him. Jim Brooks suggested I give Bobby my salary. I offered. Bobby didn’t want it.

“We’re working together,” he said. “You and me, you know? I’ll take Jim’s.”

However, he had second thoughts and called the next day. Apologetic, he explained he couldn’t do the movie anymore. He’d be too angry. I understood. But now I was back to square one. Sort of.

The cast and crew of
Big
celebrated when the movie grossed over $100 million. Left to right: Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks, Tracy, Penny, Sarah Colleton, and Jim and Holly Brooks.
Marshall personal collection

B
OTH TOM HANKS AND
Jeff Bridges now wanted to be in
Big
. It was a nice problem to have. Tom was making
Dragnet
, and Jeff had done
Starman
, which I thought had the same kind of innocence I needed in
Big
. It came down to choosing between them, and I went with my gut. I decided to wait for Tom.

I had known Tom for years and we’d always liked each other. He was one of the nicest guys in the business. I felt good about the decision. When we finally met about
Big
, I asked with raised eyebrows what he’d been doing with Danny Aykroyd in
Dragnet
, and he said, “Having fun.” As for playing Josh, he asked whether I wanted
The Nutty Professor
or
Being There
, and I said the latter. The movie was high concept, but in order to for it to work it had to be played with total honesty.

As we waited for Tom, casting director Juliet Taylor worked on filling out the movie’s other parts. She brought in the world. I read them all. In fact, I was reading actresses for the part that went to Elizabeth Perkins when I saw John Heard waiting for his girlfriend to read. I asked if he would come in and read with her. I don’t like to read with
people; I’m not the character. He did, and he made me laugh more than anyone. I gave him the part.

When Tom was finally available, I heard from Bobby again. He had changed his mind and wanted to do the movie. Apologetic, I told him that we’d moved forward. By then Tom was reading with actresses for the part of Josh’s mother, which went to Mercedes Ruehl. I remember telling her not to go in the sun. So what’d she do? She went in the sun. One day on the set, someone said, “Who’s that Puerto Rican?” Well, that’s Josh’s Cliffside Park, New Jersey, mother.

As for the young Josh, I liked David Moscow. And once he was signed, I taped him doing all of Tom’s scenes with the older actors so that Tom could use them as a guide for how an actual twelve-year-old boy would look and move and talk.

We shot in New Jersey and New York. Once production began, I developed a good rhythm with Tom. In his early thirties, he was confident, but still full of the eagerness of a young actor determined to own the part. I asked him to play innocent and shy but with a youthful energy. It was a challenge because the movie’s high concept had to be honest, and there wasn’t much variation in the script. Josh was either scared, happy, or confused.

I knew what it was like for an actor to find the right note, and I enjoyed watching Tom’s process. He would try everything in rehearsals. “Just let me get it out of my system,” he’d say. I’d wait him out. What’s good about Tom, though, is that he’s quick. We developed a shorthand. When I said “insh”—my own word—he knew it meant “be innocent and shy.” All I needed to do was give him a word or a gesture and he’d run with it.

This was the first movie where I wore a headset so I could hear the actors through the sound system, and after certain takes I’d make little noises, depending on how they did. I wasn’t aware of it. Then I must have groaned one too many times, and Tom finally said, “Penny, we can hear you.” It didn’t inhibit his performance. For the movie to work, he had to hit exactly the right note from the moment
the audience first saw him as Josh waking up in the body of a thirty-year-old—and he nailed it.

We labored over the sequence following his transformation when he hides from his mother, checks himself out in the bathroom mirror, and takes clothes from his father’s closet. It was key since the audience already knew Josh as a normal twelve-year-old boy, and Tom got better and better the more he did it. When he flees the house on his stingray bicycle, a grown up on a kid’s bike, there’s no doubt that he’s Josh. The buy-in was complete.

I jokingly began referring to Tom as “Popo the Mute Boy”—or just “Popo” for short. It was because he was playing a kid and didn’t drive any of the scenes as an adult would. He reacted to things. Luckily Tom has a terrific sense of humor, especially about himself, and didn’t mind being Popo. But that lightness was part of the process. I think the secret to getting all that right was that we let ourselves play. I let Tom play. I let myself play, too. We always gave ourselves those precious five more minutes. It wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Tom had to find the kid in him and let that out rather than simply act like a kid.

You can see that clearly in the scene at the office Christmas party. The table is full of adult food, including caviar, which Josh/Tom tries and spits out while coughing, sounding like a cat with something in its throat. That was in the script. But we did fifteen other bits. Tom put olives on each finger. He licked cream cheese out of celery. He
played
with the food. At one point, I spotted some baby corn in a salad on the prop table. I picked it up and mimed to Tom. He gave me a thumbs-up and knew exactly what to do.

I lacked the same shorthand with my director of photography, Barry Sonnenfeld. Talented and opinionated, he had worked with the Coen brothers on their stylized film
Blood Simple
and he wanted to shoot
Big
from similar angles. Movies bring together dozens of strong-willed people with a sense of how they want to make the film and every day is a collaborative effort. But at the end of the day, only
one person is in charge, and that was me. Despite Barry’s best intentions, I wanted the movie shot straight on and close up. The party scene was a good example. Barry didn’t want to go in close when Tom ate the baby corn.

“You have to be in at least waist high,” I said.

“I’m not going in,” he said.

“It’s too wide,” I said.

“I disagree,” he said.

I thought he was more interested in impressing the studio with his shot.

“Well, I’ll do an insert of him picking up a piece of corn,” he said. “Would you rather that?”

In the end, he went in, and the bit got a laugh as big as, if not bigger than, when Tom spit out the caviar. I don’t want to be surrounded by people who only say yes. A good, healthy discussion creates new ways of looking at a scene or confirms initial thoughts, as it did in this case. As I told Barry, I wasn’t a director who made shot lists, but I knew what I wanted.

For about seven weeks of the production I battled a nagging health issue that would have mattered only to a woman. I thought I had gotten my period, and then I didn’t stop bleeding. It kept up forever. Every day my assistant, Amy Lemisch, would point me to the bathroom and tell me which stall she’d left the Kotex in. “Second one on the left.” Finally, my body seized up on me. We were shooting the scene where Elizabeth takes care of Tom after he’s had a fight. Right before lunch I turned to my associate producer Tim Bourne and asked him to drive me to a gynecologist my assistant had found. Poor Tim got an earful of what I thought was going on with me.