What I kept thinking all through the shooting was how enormously attractive Sidney still was; at seventy-one, he looked maybe fifty, and I couldn’t quite figure out why he wasn’t continually playing leads in theatrical features. Certainly his age never held him back: when he had to sprint down a hallway, it was done like a man half his age. He ate very carefully (mostly vegetarian), exercised and did yoga regularly, and never complained of the long hours or the cold Chicago winter—colder than anywhere I’ve ever been—or the late-night shooting outdoors. My daughter Antonia had a role in the film, and Sidney was very warm and kind to her. When people recognized him in public places, he always was affable. “Hey, Sidney!” someone would call out. Sidney would respond immediately, “Yeah, how you doing, man!”
After shooting was completed, Poitier was very anxious to see a rough cut, which I was under no contractual obligation to show him yet did anyway. He had many notes, all good, all carried out; though he seemed at the time fearful that I wouldn’t listen to him. Actually, he told me later that he was concerned because I wasn’t taking notes, and then amazed that I had actually addressed every single point. Well, I said, they were all perfect, like his performance. We were both very happy when the picture was finally aired, and the ratings were such that we won the time-slot.
For those two hours, more people were watching Poitier than any other TV fare in America. It was fascinating to observe corporate America’s belief in Sidney as the commercials interrupted our movie seven times (which had been planned for in the writing and direction): just about every large advertiser you can think of had a spot that night, and all but maybe one or two were directly addressed to a black audience, with virtually all-black casts. It brought to mind what an executive at Disney had told me when I did a TV feature comedy for them with a black family in the leads. He had assured me the picture would get a very good rating; I asked why he was so certain of that. He replied that the black audience “doesn’t get many shows made especially for them.”
Sidney Poitier as Mr. Tibbs, a Northern police detective in a Southern police chief’s territory for In the Heat of the Night (1967), co-starring Rod Steiger, directed by Norman Jewison; Poitier made a sequel, They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (1970).
On the long flight we had taken to London, Sidney and I sat next to each other and he waxed extremely eloquent on a subject he had been studying for years—astronomy; he knew everything about planets and stars. His knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, this science was not only passionate but strongly philosophical. The reality of the heavens seemed to keep him balanced in his sense of self and the world, and with all of life’s myriad unbalanced aspects. Hadn’t he been living since birth with one of the worst of these—bigotry, inequality, racism—and the multiple limitations built into something as superficial as skin-color? When Sidney spoke of the planets, it was as though he could make sense of them far more easily than of the lives we were all living. To be the privileged representative of an underprivileged minority in a world of white celebrity and supremacy had to be a difficult and complicated role to endure for fifty years, all the while maintaining control of moral, psychological and emotional balance. One has to profoundly admire Sidney Poitier if for no other reason than that he carried an impossible burden with enormous grace and empowered millions by depicting beauty and hope in the face of despair, as well as conspicuous decency and courage. That he would play Nelson Mandela in a TV film about the heroic South African icon was, of course, entirely appropriate.
There was an obvious irony in the 2002 Academy Awards ceremony when Poitier was honored with a Special Oscar, and Denzel Washington won the Best Actor prize—the first to a black actor since Sidney’s win nearly forty years before. Washington acknowledged that without Poitier, he wouldn’t have been standing there, but further irony lay in the fact that Denzel had won for playing a role (in Training Day) that Sidney himself never would have even considered touching: a violent, unmitigated, unredeemed murderer. Sidney applauded enthusiastically for Denzel that night—and for Halle Berry who, the same evening, became the first black woman ever to win the Best Actress Oscar—but I wondered what he was really thinking. Did it cross his mind that Denzel had played the kind of thoroughgoing heavy that Widmark had played in Sidney’s first movie, No Way Out, and that what Poitier had represented all his life had led ultimately to a black actor being allowed to embody a total blot on humanity? Many actors, after all, do love to play villains. Or was he thinking perhaps of those stars and planets that made sense, rather than of the fleeting honors of our brief passage through this maze of life on earth? That is the kind of stoic dignity and calm, focused introspection Sidney carries with him at every step. As a special human being he represents far more than the sum of his roles, because, finally, the part he was given to play in life, and in which he has triumphed, is among the toughest of all.
Born Sidney Poitier, February 20, 1924, Miami, FL.
Selected starring features (with director):
1950: No Way Out (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
1952: Cry, the Beloved Country (Zoltan Korda); Red Ball Express (Budd Boetticher)
1955: The Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks)
1957: Edge of the City (Martin Ritt); Something of Value (Richard Brooks); Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh)
1958: The Defiant Ones (Stanley Kramer)
1959: Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger)
1961: A Raisin in the Sun (Daniel Petrie); Paris Blues (Ritt)
1962: Pressure Point (Hubert Cornfield)
1963: Lilies of the Field (Ralph Nelson)
1965: The Bedford Incident (James B. Harris); A Patch of Blue (Guy Green); The Slender Thread (Sydney Pollack)
1967: In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison); To Sir, with Love (James Clavell); Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Stanley Kramer)
1968: For Love of Ivy (Daniel Mann)
1970: They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (Gordon Douglas)
1974: Uptown Saturday Night (also directed)
1975: The Wilby Conspiracy (Nelson)
1977: A Piece of the Action (also directed)
1988: Little Nikita (Richard Benjamin)
1992: Sneakers (Phil Alden Robinson)
1996: To Sir, with Love II (P.B.)
1997: Mandela and de Klerk (Joseph Sargent)
24
RIVER PHOENIX
Toward the end of 1992 while I was in Manhattan casting a new picture, a long-distance call came through to my hotel room from a Paramount executive on the West Coast saying that River Phoenix wanted to star in our movie. I was astonished. Had we offered it to him? No, the exec said, River’s agent had called to say the actor had read it and wanted to play the male lead of James, a country singer trying to make it in Nashville. Of course, all of us involved in the project had discussed him for the role—we kidded that River’s name already sounded like a country star—but we felt certain he was too big a film star by then to be part of what was essentially an ensemble picture, written somewhat more from the woman’s point of view, rather than a vehicle for him. There were really four leads, two male, two female, and at least two other key roles. So none of us had even approached him. I asked how he had got the script. The exec didn’t know, said I should call the agent myself. I did. The upshot was that he did do the movie and that, tragically, The Thing Called Love would turn out to be the last one River completed before his death on Halloween a year later at age twenty-three.
By the time I got that first call, River Phoenix had been playing leads in features for more than seven years, since he was fourteen. Born to a wandering, freethinking, vegan, “hippie” kind of family that traveled through South America for a time, River had sung and played the guitar on streets as a kid, and acted and sung on TV before he was ten. Director Rob Reiner would later report that River lost his virginity at fourteen doing his second film and first big success, Stand by Me (1986). River was immediately recognized as a major talent, an endlessly fascinating kid to watch who never seemed to be acting a
t all.
A quick succession of challenging roles in quality pictures followed, including Peter Weir’s adaptation of the Paul Theroux novel The Mosquito Coast (1986), starring Harrison Ford (who immediately took to River and became his pal), Helen Mirren, Andre Gregory and Martha Plimpton. (Martha would become the first great love of River’s brief life.) Also Little Nikita (1988), directed by Richard Benjamin, with Sidney Poitier (whom River adored, and vice versa), and Sidney Lumet’s memorable Running on Empty (1988). An extraordinarily troubling love story between River and Martha Plimpton—while off-screen it burned even brighter—Running on Empty was also a fascinating political and emotional study, with Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti, and River as a brilliant musician who gets into Juilliard. For this superb performance, the Academy nominated River as Best Supporting Actor for the first and only time. He was eighteen.
River Phoenix as a musician on the run with his political-fugitive parents in Running on Empty (1988), directed by Sidney Lumet, for which River received his one Academy Award nomination, as Best Supporting Actor. He and Martha Plimpton were lovers in the film and in life.
The following year he won the coveted role of Young Indiana Jones (thus playing Harrison Ford as a teenager), with Sean Connery as his father, in the enormously popular Steven Spielberg–George Lucas collaboration, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) as well as a part in Lawrence Kasdan’s quirky comedy-drama, I Love You to Death (1990) starring Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman and Keanu Reeves, with whom River would co-star the following year in Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, a major critical and art-house hit, River getting raves for his rivetingly intimate portrait of a suicidal narcoleptic hustler.
Though reportedly River, like just about everyone in recent generations, had already fooled around a bit with drugs, My Own Private Idaho was the first time that substance-abuse played a large part in a character River portrayed. There was homosexuality, too, and there were unsubstantiated rumors that River had been pursued to experiment in both areas as preparation for his role. This would have been a rampantly misunderstood application of Stanislavski’s “method.” As the legendary actress/acting teacher Stella Adler—the only American to actually work with the real Stanislavski for any period of time—used to say: “To play dead, darling, you don’t have to die!” She also always warned that it was vastly unhealthy to “take the part home with you,” to continue playing a role even after work for the day is complete. Stella said, “If you do that, darling, it will drive you crazy!” River had no formal training as an actor, however, everything being picked up on the run. Talent he possessed, boundlessly, but the protective technique he lacked while expressing it instead often became “living the character,” and River “lived” it for most of the time until the job was over.
Going against his own personal predilections, River did a major studio “commercial” picture next, Sneakers (1992), with an all-star cast including Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd (who joked that he wanted to “adopt” River), and Sidney Poitier (a happy reunion). Back to the more avantgarde mode the young actor preferred, the next picture he took was Sam Shepard’s Silent Tongue (produced in 1991), in which he gives a lovely performance, co-starred with Richard Harris, Alan Bates, and Dermot Mulroney, who became a friend. In fact, River was instrumental in Dermot’s being cast in our film, which became River’s thirteenth feature in less than eight years.
For his whole professional life, River Phoenix had only one agent, Iris Burton, who adored him, treated him as a son. When I called her from New York, Iris explained that because she knew River loved to sing and write songs, she had sent the script down to him at his family’s home in Florida. (River had bought the house for his mother, Heart, his three younger sisters and younger brother; he also bought a place in Costa Rica for his estranged father.) Burton had warned River that the script needed work, but that because I was directing, she knew it would be heavily revised. After a few days, River called her. “This script really isn’t ready at all,” he said. She repeated that I was the director. Then she told me that River had no idea who I was. She asked him if he had seen The Last Picture Show, and River said no. (Of course, when that movie was originally released in 1971, River was about fifteen months old.) She advised him to go to the video store, rent the movie, run it, and then call her. He did, and enthusiastically said, yes, he wanted to work with “the guy who directed that picture,” and so Iris Burton called Paramount, Paramount called me, I called Iris, and now she suggested that River call me, which he did soon after.
Significantly, as things turned out, it would be the one and only conversation I ever had with River before he officially got the part in The Thing Called Love. He started out by heaping lavish praise on The Last Picture Show and especially on the entire cast’s performances. When I steered the conversation to the script of the new film, we agreed that the dialogue and construction both needed a great deal of work. I said that luckily the studio, and even the young writer (Carol Heikkinen), agreed. That meant we could essentially change it however we wanted. Since he was the same age as all the lead characters, I wanted his input throughout; not only would I welcome it, I said, but I would expect it. That excited him. I asked how tall he was. He exaggerated only about an inch or so and said, “Six feet.” While he’d been brilliant in every role I’d ever seen him do, I said, he had never played a character with the strong edge of danger which this James fellow had to have. Yes, River agreed, he’d never done anything like that. I asked him, How was he going to convey this danger? There was quiet for several moments, and then River said, “Silence.”
That was extraordinarily perceptive, I thought, as well as cogent and succinct. I knew just what he meant—silence from a character can be a form of power, the power of withholding—and power is dangerous. From that single word I knew he would play the role superbly, and he did. At the time, I sort of grunted and said, “Yeah, that would do it.” Then River said, “Look, I want to work with you, man, so I don’t have to meet you. Do you have to meet me?” I said no, it wasn’t necessary, we both were professionals. “Yeah,” he said, “I just want to stay here with my family as long as I can before I gotta come up there and start the picture.” Which was soon enough, I answered, saying I certainly understood, and so by the time I first met River Phoenix about a month later, he was already playing the charming, talented but somewhat hard-ass role of James. What I wouldn’t realize until about a month after we completed the shooting was that I didn’t meet the real River Phoenix until then.
Prior to that, I was dealing with a kid who seemed alternately sensitive beyond words, overly self-involved, flat-out rude or jokingly abusive, moody, funny, quirky, often very likeable, dangerous. It was River’s version of James, and so entirely convincing that I thought it was what River was really like and that he didn’t have to act. Which clearly is what River had wanted. Throughout the working process, however, his creative side was objective, clear, and concerned not only with his own role but with each of the characters and the overall construction. During the casting, I told him we needed another attractive guy to play his buddy. He suggested Anthony Clark (later seen to good advantage on the TV series Boston Common and Yes, Dear). We flew Anthony in, and ended up using him as a secondary character we expanded to suit his exceptional comic abilities. I told River I liked Anthony but not for the Kyle part—the other male lead—we needed more of “a contender,” I said. River was undaunted: “Anthony’s really good with girls,” he said, “he scores a lot!” I countered, “But he’s not a leading man.”
River stopped and looked at me for a couple of moments and then said, “Well, if you want another leading man you can’t do better than Dermot Mulroney.” River knew I had already met with Dermot and a number of other actors, and that Dermot was high on a short list of possibilities. River’s comment cinched it, but what I found intriguing then, and even more unusual now, is that River was thinking of the overall work, and if I wanted two leading men, well, that was OK with him, he
wasn’t threatened; in fact, he let the other guy be more conventionally good-looking, that was OK, too.
You’re supposed to be a confident old pro to have that kind of self-assurance and wisdom, but River as an artist possessed this quality in spades. Which is why I increasingly wanted him involved in all script conferences and writing sessions, every music discussion—and he was—repeatedly making superb contributions. River was an instinctive talent of the highest caliber. When I pointed out to him once that his ideas and remarks relating to the script or characters invariably kept the full picture in mind, and never simply his own role, he said he always thought that way. I said then he would “make a good director.” He said he had “thought about directing.” I said, “Well, be sure and cast me, will ya?” He laughed and said he would. It became a small running joke between us. When I asked what it was that had attracted him to show business, he said his mother used to read stories to him as a kid and he “always liked stories,” so he especially liked “being part of a story.”
On the first day of shooting—a night scene at a mall on location in Nashville—River gave Samantha Mathis a hard time, bringing her to tears. When River’s first phone call had reached me in New York, I had been there talking to Samantha about doing the film. She had been worried about the script’s readiness, but when River signed, she jumped right on. Now, in Nashville, she was pretty upset, and said she didn’t have to “take his shit”—he was “just rude.” I asked if he was on something? She said she only knew he’d had a beer. The assistant director also told me River was acting erratically. I asked him if he thought our star was on drugs. The A.D. nodded, yes.
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