I Blame Dennis Hopper

by Illeana Douglas

  Months later, I got an unexpected call that he had moved to L.A., and did I want to hang out? Post-pilot slump, it was the best offer I’d received in a long time. Although, you don’t exactly just “hang out” with Brian De Palma, you hang on! Brian is not the most inconspicuous person on the planet, but he was game to accompany me to some pretty artsy events. I remember he was editing The Black Dahlia, and he called and asked me what I was doing that night, and I told him, “I’m doing one of these storytelling evenings at a place called Sit ’n Spin.”

  He roared, “Oh, my God, that sounds dreadful! I want to watch!”

  I said, “Brian I really don’t think this is your scene—”

  And he bellowed, “Are you embarrassed? Is it that awful? Are you so afraid of being humiliated by me?”

  You don’t argue with Brian. You just shake your head and laugh, knowing that he always tells it like it is. Shut up, listen, and try to get a word in here or there, because what he has to offer is pretty brilliant.

  His movies like Dressed to Kill and The Untouchables are all known for their unusual camera angles, compositions, and choreographed long takes. They are stylized, and the images are thrilling. He’s whip-smart, so sharp and intuitive, and although he might not want to admit it, deeply sensitive—but he does tend to bellow. He has never lost his curiosity about life, and it has always impressed me, because it means he has never lost touch. Sure enough, he came to Sit ’n Spin that night, sat on cushions on the floor with a bunch of hipsters, and watched me perform for the first time in public a story I was working on. That story became the first chapter in this book: I Blame Dennis Hopper. I looked out, and there was Brian, sitting on the ground, cross-legged in his ever-present safari jacket, just roaring, laughing his head off.

  Afterward, the subject of my failed pilot came up. I really didn’t want him to see it, because I figured the work was just bad, but he insisted, and as I said, you don’t argue with Brian, so I invited him over to my groovy ’60s house for dinner and a viewing of the show. I made roast chicken—because I knew that at least that would be good. Typical Brian, as soon as he walked in he started to make fun of my house. “I’m having a ’60s flashback!” he shouted. “I should have worn beads!”

  He scolded me, “That driveway is a deterrent to all men! No one will ever visit you here.”

  He cursed me, of course, because Brian and my friend Danny Ferrington were the only other two people who ever saw the house. Brian had scraped the bottom of his car pulling in. Danny hit the fence while trying to park his truck, and I almost backed my car off a cliff before I finally had enough of life in the Hollywood Hills!

  I was in a self-help phase—you know, livin’ in L.A. and all—and Brian spotted a large sheet of affirmations that I had taped on the refrigerator. He started to read them aloud with asides.

  “GET WHAT YOU WANT.”

  “Of course.”

  “DON’T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER.”

  “Always.”

  “LET YOUR AURA SHINE.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Brian wanted to see the Illeanarama pilot, and I was making excuses. I said, “Brian, it’s awful; it’s amateurish. It doesn’t work.” And he shouted, “Listen, if it’s shit, I’ll tell you it’s shit, and then we can have dinner!” That became my next affirmation, by the way.

  “IF IT’S SHIT, I’LL TELL YOU IT’S SHIT, AND THEN WE CAN HAVE DINNER.” Works for a lot of things.

  After some hemming and hawing I put the tape in the player and just left the room, waiting for Brian’s inevitable skewering. The show ended, and Brian proceeded to give me a detailed and helpful critique that went beyond just mentioning the line that referenced him: “There’s a ketchup spill in aisle four. It looks like something out of a Brian De Palma movie.” He said thoughtfully, “There is something to this idea. Stick with it. It’s good.”

  It was those words of encouragement from Brian that made me keep trying. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and continued. I figured if someone of his stature took the time to encourage me, who was I to let him down? Once again, the movies had rescued me, from Dennis Hopper helping me understand and appreciate my Easy Rider childhood, to singing in the key of Liza, to Rudy Vallée’s playing me the tape of his applause backstage at the Camelot, to Lee Marvin’s wishing me good luck on Madison Avenue, to getting words of wisdom from Marlon Brando, to meeting Albert Brooks when I was directing Supermarket—the right person, at the right time, has always stepped off the screen and been there for me because I couldn’t be there for myself.

  Brian brought up the idea of putting the show on the Internet, because he said that was the future of entertainment. He was saying this in 2005! At the same time, I started to call supermarkets such as Vons, Ralphs, and Whole Foods. I met with the supply chain Office Depot. I tried to explain the premise of the show, but in the end, the idea of financing a comedy show that took place in a supermarket aisle, or in an Office Depot, seemed too far-out for everyone. Two years went by, and as Brian said, the Internet was beginning to explode. I put Illeanarama on YouTube, cutting it into sections that could be played as episodes, hoping to gain some interest there.

  A very lucky thing happened. In addition to our getting a lot of views and winning an online-video award from the TV Guide Network, a man named Fred Dubin who worked for a media company called MEC saw it. MEC’s client was IKEA, and he brought Illeanarama to their attention. The next thing I knew, I was meeting at MEC in New York with Fred and IKEA’s marketing executive, Magnus Gustafsson, to discuss writing comic interstitials for them. IKEA and Magnus had launched a successful campaign in which the comedian Mark Malkoff lived at an IKEA for a week, but they wanted to follow it up with something a little more high-profile. I was tasked with changing the image of IKEA as a brand that only college kids used and making it seem a little more hip. The more we spoke about how to accomplish this goal, the more the idea of creating a kind of Illeanarama at IKEA came up. I actually used the IKEA products, so I was a consumer being given an opportunity to promote a brand that I believed in. That was good for the marketers.

  On the creative side for me, there was something intrinsically funnier about my working in an IKEA rather than in a supermarket. The bright primary colors and the little home within IKEA’s home displays were ideal for situation comedy. Part of IKEA’s philosophy was to give me free rein to come up with any story line I wanted—as long as Jeff Goldblum was in it, that is. I remember that when I told them I was pretty sure I could get Jeff to make a cameo, Magnus leaned across the table and with a thick Swedish accent said, “U cud haf Yeff Guldblume at IKEA?” Thank God it happened, or we would have never moved forward, apparently. Jeff had never set foot in an IKEA, but he came through for me, appearing in the first season as himself and shooting a fake IKEA training video called Helpful Swedish Phrases. There was a wormhole feeling at IKEA that lent itself to having any number of guest stars. You could walk down an aisle, get lost trying to find something, and see me and Tom Arnold trying to shoot a sex video, or Jeff Goldblum discussing personal grooming with IKEA coworkers. We had Craig Bierko secretly living in one of the bedrooms after his real-life television show had been canceled. “Do you work here, too?” I ask him.

  No, he says, “I live here. Don’t tell IKEA.”

  No one likes to hear this part. The first season I wrote the script, turned it in, and waited for my notes. First note: “We don’t sell ice cream; it’s frozen yogurt.” I got my pen ready for more. “OK, what’s next?”

  That was it. One note!

  Magnus said, “Good stuff,” and we were shooting by the summer of 2008. We filmed on the floors of a working store in Burbank with Jeff Goldblum, Justine Bateman, Jane Lynch, Greg Proops, Ed Begley—all of the folks from the original Illeanarama—plus Robert Patrick, Tom Arnold, Kevin Pollak, Alan Havey, and Craig Bierko. Shooting Easy to Assemble was like live theater. Because we filmed in a working store, we had shoppers, so we used them as extras, and t
hey were thrilled to be part of the action. They watched our fictional Justine Bateman talk show, 40 and Bitter, and thought that it was a real talk show. Justine was so wonderfully deadpan. “In my twenties I was self-deprecating. In my thirties, I was ironic; now that I’m forty I’m just plain bitter.” Then we had an actor “pretend” to be a shopper and start measuring her desk, trying to walk off with it while Justine yells at him that he can order it online. This blend of fact and fiction was exciting to all of us.

  The idea of Easy to Assemble was to confuse the audience as to which scene was real and which was staged, but I can tell you, everything was carefully planned and written—but in the natural style of Albert Brooks. I loved writing the “frenemy” story line between me and Justine. Two actresses trying to one-up each other to avoid coworker downsizing became the subject of our second season, Coworker of the Year.

  Magnus made sure I was given complete access to the Burbank store. We would shoot scenes with actor managers such as Jane Lynch and Eric Lange alongside real IKEA managers working at their desks. IKEA thought it was important that I be treated as a real coworker, so I was given a handbook about coming to work at IKEA. I kept explaining, “You realize I’m an actress, right, and that this is all fake?”

  But a funny thing started to happen. Working for IKEA started to really affect me. I began to feel like part of the IKEA family. It went beyond loyalty. They trusted me, and I trusted them. I made IKEA seem like a fun place to work because I was having fun. They were letting me stage musical numbers in the self-serve warehouse. Coworkers were asking if their IKEA shirts could be retrofitted the way our costumer had retrofitted mine, turning them into minidresses. We once made a dress out of a 36-cent IKEA bag for actress Kate Micucci, and it was the envy of all the real employees. IKEA was a character in the show. We highlighted the yellow shirts, the meatballs, the relentless cheerfulness—even the name Easy to Assemble poked some not-so-subtle fun at furniture that was notorious for being not easy to assemble. I created fake IKEA training films introduced by celebrities and a fictional Swedish band called Sparhusen that only IKEA coworkers knew about.

  We had a character, Coworker Lance Krapp, played by Michael Irpino, who desperately wants to be Swedish, so he wears this crazy synthetic blond wig. Well, “Lance” was so beloved by IKEA that he became an ambassador when we were shooting, greeting shoppers as they entered the store. No one found it at all unusual that this IKEA coworker was wearing a crazy blond wig. His name tag said COWORKER OF THE YEAR, and people just assumed that he was. Normally on a set you have what’s called lock off, which means that the only people allowed are actors and crew. There’s no talking; there’s no moving when shooting a scene. However, we were working in a live store and were all wearing our IKEA outfits, so shoppers would watch us film, tell me they loved me in Stir of Echoes, and then, in the middle of shooting, ask, “Could you tell me where the towels are?” I once ran into a very high-profile casting director, and I had to convince him that I was not really working at IKEA! And I was pulling story lines from IKEA managers and coworkers. Magnus told me about a “team-building event” that was designed for coworkers to share ideas about work but turned into a singles mixer. It became an episode. All the while, I was being given more and more responsibility, and bigger budgets. We were the first Web series to go fully union. I was dealing with complex issues involving crews and budgets. We were releasing soundtracks with the band Sparhusen and working with Swedish bands, such as Marching Band. We set up distribution with companies such as Blip, My Damn Channel, and Dailymotion. I oversaw our Facebook and Twitter pages, and interacted with the IKEA fan sites. I learned all about social and transmedia strategies. It was like being paid to learn how to become a successful producer. I was finding skills I never knew I had, and I loved it.

  Over the years we attracted a cornucopia of stars including Keanu Reeves, Tim Meadows, Cheri Oteri, David Henrie, Fred Willard, Patricia Heaton, Laraine Newman, Ricki Lake, Roger Bart, and Kate Micucci. We ran the production out of my little bungalow house in West Hollywood, sometimes shooting there as well. I was an actress playing a role of an IKEA Coworker of the Year who started being treated like an IKEA coworker. I was shooting a film in Scottsdale, Arizona, and my season four executive, Raymond Simanavicius, who took over when Magnus left, said to me, “Are you going to find time to visit the IKEA in Tempe?” I said, “Well, Raymond, I’m making a movie; I don’t think so,” and there was dead silence at the other end. It was the same joke. “You realize I’m an actress, right? I don’t actually work for IKEA?”

  We were getting ready to shoot the fourth season, and I was invited to IKEA’s U.S. headquarters, in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, to take part in an all-day think tank and work session with the heads of marketing. I really wanted to have an IKEA bike, because that was something all of the IKEA coworkers got, and for season four Raymond Simanavicius personally brought one to my house. Yes. It was in a box in fifty pieces, and yes, I had to put it together. We parodied the entire experience on This Side Up, which was our last season. This was the story line: An actress goes to work at IKEA because she wants to get out of show business but starts doing an Internet talk show called This Side Is Up on the floor of IKEA that becomes a big hit and forces her to go back into show business. We ended with Tom Arnold’s staging an intervention to get me to leave IKEA. The hardest part for me was walking away from the safety and creative freedom. After five years, they had given me all the tools and the confidence I needed to be a filmmaker. The metaphor “easy to assemble” had also applied to me. As I worked on the show, the “life improvement” store and the “life improvement actress” meshed into a real-life story line of triumph, artistically, economically, and professionally.

  I asked Fred Dubin recently, “Why on earth did you guys move forward with me?”

  And he said, “I once watched you up at Sundance sing a Cat Stevens song and thought you might be a fun person to do business with.” Thank you, “Wild World.”

  Then he said more seriously, “You thought like a marketer. My job was finding the right person to do something for the client that hadn’t been done before.” I think we did that, Fred. We did indeed.

  Easy to Assemble was voted the number-two most influential idea created at MEC that year. Advertising Age awarded it one of the top five Best Branded Deals of 2010. We were featured in large profiles in the business section of The New York Times and in The Wall Street Journal as something now called branded entertainment. Featured in textbooks and case studies. We were nominated for seven Streamy Awards and won two, for Best Product Integration and Best Ensemble Cast. We won six Webby awards. I received an ITV Fest Innovator Award, the award for Best Online Performance from the Banff World TV Fest, and a 2010 NATPE Digital Luminary Award. By season four we had averaged more than 50 million views on sites such as Dailymotion, YouTube, My Damn Channel, KoldCast, Hulu, Blip, and many more. Ad Age called Easy to Assemble “the most successful branded show of all time.” We even branched out, working with other brands such as Trident, JetBlue, Hasbro, and Nabisco, all of whom were featured or cross-promoted through the show.

  You can’t do a show about Sweden and not make reference to Ingmar Bergman. The truth is, I had never seen a Bergman movie except for Fanny and Alexander. I had seen Woody Allen’s movies and knew he worshiped Bergman, but I didn’t know why. I always felt his films would be intellectually over my head. Death plays a game of chess with a knight. What? I decided to immerse myself in Bergman, and his films became a revelation for me. You can think you’ve seen every film out there, and then you discover someone, and it changes you forever. I had always had ideas in my head that I thought were too far-out to actually ever write about. Bergman gave me the courage to express what I was feeling inside. He did not shy away from absolute, gut-wrenching grief, which is at the core of all comedy, anyway. Through a Glass Darkly, Wild Strawberries, and The Seventh Seal were about as close to the pain and joy of life as any other films I’d seen. Like Alb
ert Brooks, he made films about the human condition, but he made them from deep inside. He went to the bone. He captured the living, breathing soul of a character. Watching Bergman movies dramatically changed my writing. I moved away from just jokes and funny situations to the inner life of Illeanarama and Illeana, who happened to be playing her. I had a vocabulary now. Simple and honest writing that felt more like I was sharing my intimate thoughts. The show took on a different tone, and it caught the notice of Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times when he wrote, “Easy to Assemble is not a perfect thing … But I love it. It’s honest and sweet and original and, especially this year, it’s shot through with a feeling of ripening possibility that defines equally its main character and the person who made her.”

  Season three, Finding North, was a road trip through Sweden, so I reached out to a Swedish agency in Stockholm to see if they had any Swedish-speaking actors living in California. I got an email back from an agent there named Aleksandra Mandic. It turned out that she had represented Harriet Andersson–who had been the star of many Bergman films. She sent some wonderful Swedish actors my way, all of whom made it into Easy to Assemble. We were trying to work something out with a wonderful actress named Josephine Bornebusch, who was starring in a huge comedy series called Solsidan. A visa was too expensive and we couldn’t make it work, but I stayed in touch with Aleksandra, telling her, you know, if anything ever comes up in Sweden please let me know, because I would love the opportunity of working there. That was in 2011. In 2013 I got an email from Aleksandra that Josephine Bornebusch was writing and starring in a show called Welcome to Sweden along with Greg Poehler, brother of Amy Poehler and a talented comedian. My dream came true when that summer I flew to Stockholm to shoot. Aside from working with Josephine and Greg, I would be acting opposite the great Swedish actress Lena Olin. I felt like I was returning to my fictional homeland. All along the way there were these strange coincidences. I had filmed a season of Easy to Assemble called Flying Solo, in which all the IKEA coworkers were flying to Sweden for Midsummer and now I was really flying to Sweden. I arrived as if staged on the eve of Midsummer. I had written about being in the forests of Sweden, and now we were shooting Welcome to Sweden in the forest with Lena Olin. I felt that a trip to the mother ship—the original IKEA in Uppsala—was in order. My friend and Welcome to Sweden coworker Johan, who also strangely bore a resemblance to Coworker Lance, drove me. I wore my IKEA shirt, because I thought it would be fun to take pictures of me in it, and a shopper immediately came over to me and started asking me questions in Swedish! Johan began to explain to her that I did not actually work at the store and the customer didn’t believe him.