by Anne Edwards
This was several years before the film Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks in an Academy Award performance, broke the Hollywood stand-off on stories about AIDS patients. Philadelphia, however, focused on an AIDS patient’s right to continue a career in the workplace rather than the character’s right to love. Hollywood was not yet ready to explore this theme. Streisand would continue to walk in the face of gale winds with The Normal Heart. Renegotiations with Kramer for the rights were set in motion in the spring of 1990. Things went much more smoothly this time. Both gave in a bit, a compromise was reached. Kramer would write the script, but she would still retain the last word. Once again he flew to California for story conferences at her house. Both had changed. ‘She was a softer person, also more conscious of how hard she had been on herself in the past,’ Kramer reflected, ‘She talked a lot about it, about not trying to be the perfectionist all the time. She had been in the kind of therapy where you get in touch with the inner child. She was more considerate, somehow gentler.
‘I had known for two years that I was HIV Positive and I thought I was shortly going to die. Literally the first week I started work with her I got an emergency call from my doctor in New York. How he got Barbra’s number I’ve never known. But my blood work had just come in and he called to tell me that he had to put me on AZT right away and wanted the name of a pharmacy in Los Angeles so that I could start immediately. I was very upset and Barbra was marvellous, comforting and organisational at the same time. I’ll never forget it – or her. She put her arms around me, she contacted the pharmacy, and we talked.
‘I was violently anti-AZT. There were different schools of thought about whether it was good or not and until we had more medical details I was reluctant to take it. So this was a big emotional thing. Also, AZT can have scary side-effects on your body and I thought, “Holy shit!” I was afraid that I would have these skin lesions and not be able to work so well and this was what I had been wanting for years – for Barbra to come back on the project.’
Kramer recalls that when his doctor rang from New York Streisand sensed it was something serious. ‘She said if you want to talk privately to take it in the bathroom which adjoined her study. When I came out I was shaken and she said, “What’s the matter?” And I told her. Then she put her arms around me and hugged me close to her, very maternal. I was terribly moved. I couldn’t hold back my tears.
‘From then on it was, “How are you feeling? How’s it going? Are you having any side-effects?” There was great warmth. Much different than in 1985 when I felt more like a hired hand. Fortunately, the medication did help and I did not have any side-effects, so I carried on working.
‘Barbra writes in the old-fashioned way, in which every shot and every angle is described. She wants a sense of what the camera is doing, what you start to focus on, where does it move, what’s the action so that she can follow. She is a person who questions everything. If you had a comma there yesterday, and you don’t have one today, why has it been removed? And she knows and she remembers that there was a comma there. She has a low file cabinet, really an open drawer, that has every scene of every version of the script that I have written, she has written and anyone else has written. It is broken down by scenes and she will remember which one had what and constantly compare them. Then she will record on tape exactly the sequence she wants so that there will not be any chance of a slip-up. I would then bring it into her the next day sort of polished.
‘We’d work from three-thirty in the afternoon often until eight or nine in the evening. The rest of the house had undergone redecoration. There was new art, a great deal of mission furniture, but the study remained basically the same. She always looked lovely. She has such beautiful skin – unbelievable skin, her eyes are such a clear blue and her hair always seems right even when it’s just hanging. She wore the same kind of clothes to work in – designer-type jogging outfits.
‘There is something about her that is very touching. She is very vulnerable. You can feel it and whether she is opening it up to you or not you are in the presence of it. Maybe that is what the great singers have. They can sing these songs about how the world has touched them, or love has touched them, and you want to say, “It’s all right.” And she remembers all the bad things the press ever said about her. I asked her why she held on to things for so long, why didn’t she let it go, and she replied, “I can’t seem to help it. How do you do it? You’ve been criticised so much. Why doesn’t it bite the shit out of you?”
‘“Well, it used to,” I told her, “but you cannot take a strong opinion about something and not know that you are going to offend somebody, somewhere. Let it go, let it go,” I kept telling her. She’s trying so hard to be everything. To be the most perfect person, the most admirable person. People talk about her lust for power, her need for control. Control is a very harsh word for the way people use it against her. She wants to run her company her way, she has that right. A case in point. “There are things you write that I can’t put on the screen,” she told me. “Give me an example,” I asked.
‘ “Well, the scene where the two men make love believing they have engaged in safe sex and there is a spot of semen on one of the guy’s chest, and they don’t know whose it is and one of them indicates that it could be poisonous.”
‘“That is what I wanted to show. That a slip like that could kill you. I think it’s very moving.” And she replied, simply, with finality, “You can’t show semen on some body’s chest.”’
Her affair with Agassi came to a sudden end. She had gone to Wimbledon to watch him play Pete Sampras in the quarterfinals in June and cheered him on wildly to no avail. Agassi lost the match. By September, he was dating a younger woman and soon after would pair up with the actress Brook Shields, who was closer to his own age. At this point there was no other man in Streisand’s life. Jason was in New York attending film classes at New York University where he had made a short movie, in which his father and his grandmother, Diana, appeared, that was highly praised. He was now concentrating, not on acting but on a career as a writer and director. Streisand remained for a while in Manhattan. She was lonely, ‘very lonely’, close friends say. Jason suffered from a fear of heights, a phobia that had been a fairly recent development and could not take the elevator up to the penthouse apartment. This meant they met at more impersonal locales, restaurants, other people’s homes.
‘I think, strangely enough, that Barbra wants to make The Normal Heart for Jason,’ Kramer said. ‘I believe it’s her way in fighting for his acceptance and his right to love who he wants and be proud of who and what he is. It’s the ultimate gift, the utmost. If she’s nervous about anything, that’s where the nervousness comes. It is not easy to do a film about homosexuality when your son is involved in it. Also, I suspect that when the movie is finally made it will come out more about Jason because he wants to work on it. He has exceedingly good taste and I think Barbra, and Cis Corman, too, respect his ability.’
Jon Peters and his wife Christine were in the process of a divorce. Streisand’s concern was Caleigh, only three years old at the time. She identified closely with the child, felt her bewilderment at being the victim of a broken home. Her friendship with Peters remained solid. Both he and Christine saw Streisand’s involvement with Caleigh as a stabilising factor in the little girl’s life. Streisand decorated a bedroom in the Carolwood Drive house for her; a story-book room in pink and white with crisp organdy curtains and shelves filled with books and dolls. The child was closely attached to Streisand and was visibly happy to be with her. Peters had the responsibility of her care but Christine also shared custody. Caleigh was still too young to know how she would be affected by Streisand’s involvement in her welfare and rearing. Affectionate by nature, Caleigh and Streisand hugged and kissed a lot. Caleigh called her ‘Baba’ and Streisand doted on her. ‘I want only the best for her, the most love and affection that it is possible to give her,’ she told close friends, who noted the happiness Caleigh brought to Streisand. �
��She sees Caleigh as her own. It’s amazing how much she loves that child,’ one commented.
She had always been a champion of children’s problems in a world where they have so little control over their lives. Caleigh brought this issue closer to home.
‘One night when I was putting [Caleigh] to sleep,’ she recalled, ‘I started to sing her a lullaby. “Rock-a-bye-baby on the tree top. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the bough brakes, the cradle will fall ...” “The cradle will fall???” she exclaimed. What was I supposed to tell her? I mean really that’s a frightening thought [to tell a child.]’
She created garden space for a proper play area with a sand box and slide and a playhouse where Caleigh could have lemonade and cookies with a friend in the afternoon. She made sure Caleigh had playmates, inviting children from her pre-school to the house, took her to the beach where they built sand castles together, went shopping with her for clothes allowing the child’s taste to guide her purchases, and accompanied her to the paediatrician for her regular check-up, holding her hand so she would not be frightened. One could read many things into her close attachment to the winning blonde child whose blue eyes and wide smile were so appealing. She was the child she would have wish to have been, the girl she always wanted, the tie that would keep her bound to Peters, the granddaughter she might never have. But, perhaps, the most obvious explanation was that Caleigh satisfied a need in Streisand for a continuing bonding with another person.
Streisand re-entered the political arena when Bill Clinton won the Democratic nomination in the summer of 1992. She had not been energised by Michael Dukakis in the previous election. Now, along with the Bergmans, she joined whole-heartedly in working for his election, as impressed with Hillary Rodham Clinton as with her husband. Finally there was an especially intelligent potential First Lady, reminiscent of one of her longtime idols, Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs Clinton seemed to understand the domestic issues at stake – AIDS research, health care, a woman’s right to abort, the state of the environment – and would not be hesitant to raise her voice to bring them to the attention of the country.
She met the Clintons the night of 16 September at a HWPC fundraiser held on the expansive lawns of the $39 million, 49-acre Beverly Hills estate of reclusive film producer Ted Fields, one of the five top national Democratic donors. It was the first time in six years that she sang in public, this time not as a solo performer but on a programme crowded with Hollywood’s Democratic supporters who either spoke or performed – among them Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Goldie Hawn, Whoopi Goldberg, Stephen Spielberg, Candice Bergen (wearing glasses), Jack Nicholson (in shades), Michelle Pfeiffer, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Dreyfuss, Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman, Dionne Warwick and Mike Nichols and Elaine May, who did a rare stand-up comedy routine. Beatty introduced Clinton, who appeared somewhat overwhelmed by the stellar gathering and their eloquent outpouring of support.
‘Warren Beatty said he hadn’t known me a long time,’ he said during his speech, ‘but I was sitting there thinking I have known many of you a long time. I have seen your movies or sung your songs and just imagined that life could be as it seems to be in the lyrics or up on the screen.’ And he added, ‘I have always aspired to be in the cultural elite that others condemn.’
Streisand, simply dressed in a black scoop-necked, long-sleeved Donna Karan gown, her hair casually brushed loose to frame her face, commanded a huge ovation as she stepped up to the microphone. ‘Six years ago,’ she told the Hollywoodites who had raised over $1 million that evening, ‘I was motivated by the disaster at Chernobyl. Now I’m motivated by the possibility of another disaster: the re-election of George Bush and Dan Quayle.’ The crowd roared, and she sang ‘On A Clear Day You Can See Forever’, followed by ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’.
Maybe they were. A dedicated Democrat, it seemed that for the first time in sixteen years someone she could identify with had a good chance of making it into the White House. She liked the man a lot. He had the kind of charisma that she admired and he listened to his wife, to women, to what just plain people had to say. He was the kind of man to whom she could easily have become attracted. They spoke for a while later that evening. He told her his father had died before he was born and he understood she had lost her father at a young age. ‘It has a way of affecting your whole life,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘It’s a tough thing to overcome. I’m not sure you really ever do. It hurts to think mine never got to know I became famous, that I achieved some good things. But that you are on your way to becoming President, that’s a tough one not to share.’
Clinton smiled down at her from his great height and nodded his head, then they were joined by several others who wanted to shake the hand of the man they hoped would soon be President of the United States.
Footnotes
1 Nominated for Best Picture were The Silence of the Lambs (winner), Beauty and the Beast, Bugsy, J.F.K., and The Prince of Tides. Nominated for Best Director were Jonathan Demme, The Silence of the Lambs (the winner), Oliver Stone, J.F.K., Barry Levinson, Bugsy, John Singleton, Boyz N the Hood, and Ridley Scott for Thelma and Louise.
2 Under the contract components of Sony’s deal with Streisand, she was guaranteed $5 million advance per album for six albums plus an unprecedented 42 per cent royalty rate on the wholesale price of each unit sold (approx. $2.90 on each album sold at 1992 prices). She also was granted what is referred to as a ‘favorite nations’ clause, which guaranteed her a royalty rate that exceeded any other artist on the company’s roster. On the film end of the contract, which did not require her to deliver a specific number of pictures, she was to receive a $4 million advance against 10 per cent of gross revenues for every movie in which she appeared, $3 million for her services as director and Sony was to commit $2 million a year over an estimated ten years for development funds and operating expenses to Streisand’s Barwood Production Company to hire writers and executives to create film properties that she would either direct, act in or produce.
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‘HOW COME NOBODY attacked the Republican White House for their involvement with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charlton Heston and Bruce Willis?’ Streisand shot back at a reporter who asked her views on the media accusations that the supposed Hollywood–Clinton connection was a threat to ‘the very fabric of this Republic’. Her man had won and this time she was a part of the pre-inauguration and post-inaugural celebrations as well having a front-row seat when he took the oath of office. A huge Hollywood contingent had come to Washington to the final gala of Clinton’s inaugural week, attended by 19,000 guests at the cavernous Capital Center. The gigantic celebration was nastily referred to in the press as a ‘Hollywood–Washington production’. Streisand sang ‘Evergreen’ as the President and the First Lady held hands. Then, an enthusiastic audience thundering their approval, she gave her all to ‘On a Clear Day You Can See Forever’ and ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’, the latter to five ovations that did not stop until she introduced the President-elect, at which point the vast crowd stood up, all at once, all whistling, all hurrahs and clapping.
Streisand handed the microphone over to Clinton who stood on stage under a white spotlight, a black stool used in her act behind him. ‘Thank you for sharing with me my last night as a private citizen,’ he told them, and turned to Streisand who was still standing on the podium and gave her a warm, tight, bear hug.
One staff member, who had also worked on the Reagan and Bush pre-inaugural galas, found the Democrats ‘much more fun, much more casual. Everybody is in a party mood. No prima donnas. No ozone layer of spray over everything. Four years ago all the gowns seemed to be red, white or blue. This year – solid sequins – the brighter and funkier the better.’ Streisand wore, in contrast to the glittery evening dresses chosen by Goldie Hawn and others, a striking three-piece pin-striped Donna Karan suit, the floor-length skirt slit to the thigh, referred to in the Washington Post as ‘the peek-a-boo power suit’.
The highly succes
sful Karan, America’s leading woman designer, and now one of Streisand’s closest friends, had created a new, daring, sophisticated look for her. The two women not only shared a love of fashion, they had many of the same views and sodal commitments. They were part of ‘the sisterhood’ – those women who, like Streisand, competed in a man’s world. Karan, tall, dark-haired, comfortably built – trim, but not model-thin – was handsome, middle-aged and ran a spectacularly high-profile fashion house. But the financial backing for her enterprise came from businessmen who were interested more in the profit column than the designer’s need to express herself creatively, a situation that Streisand also dealt with in making movies.
Once again Streisand was under attack from the Washington Post, which was particularly vituperative in its assault on what it called ‘Clinton’s wooing of entertainment royalty’, adding that film stars were ‘incapable of serious involvement with the politics industry of Washington’. Streisand was singled out as a prime target and referred to demeaningly as La Streisand’.
‘When I directed a movie,’ she replied to a Los Angeles Times journalist, ‘it was as if I was being told how dare I attempt to infiltrate a man’s domain. Now, it’s: How dare I be interested in politics. Forgive my tone if I sound angry but I am!’1
