One of the biggest hurdles we had to overcome at the beginning was casting. Kathy Bates had starred as Frankie in the stage version of the play in New York, and she was brilliant. But, obviously, the executives at Paramount wanted a bigger box office name for the movie. I couldn’t argue with that logic. Kathy is a name today, but she was not back then. Luckily I later got to work with her when I cast her in my movie Valentine’s Day. She is still brilliant.
They first sent the script to Al Pacino to see if he was interested in playing Johnny. He had not done many love stories because he was usually carrying a gun and yelling things like “Attica!” Al, however, was in the mood to do something new, too, so he agreed.
Once the studio signed Al they started interviewing actresses. Michelle Pfeiffer wanted the role badly. She drove to my office in Toluca Lake to try to convince me. She didn’t come with an agent, manager, or entourage. She walked into my office alone. She knew that the problem was many people in Hollywood thought she was too beautiful to play Frankie. Who would believe that Michelle could play a lonely, regular girl who had given up on men? After talking with me for an hour, Michelle convinced me that she could play the part. She said the fact that she was pretty didn’t mean she was a stranger to loneliness and heartache over men. I believed her. I read after the casting was announced that Kathy Bates laughed when she found out Michelle was taking over her role for the movie version and rightfully so. But the truth is that the studios think some actresses are better suited for the theater and others for film. In this case I agreed. I thought Michelle and Al were a great casting choice.
Terrence and I continued to work well together once the casting was done. He is a great storyteller and someone you always want to sit next to at a dinner party. He told me he once went to a production of Frankie and Johnny at a theater in New Orleans. He was shocked to see that the actors performed most of the play totally in the nude. When Terrence went backstage to talk to the director afterward he said, “Well, that was quite a version!” The director didn’t understand. He thought he had directed the play exactly as it had been written in the Samuel French publication. Sure enough, the director was right. Terrence reviewed the stage directions, and after Frankie and Johnny took their robes off, there was no written direction for them to put them back on. In future publications of the play, Terrence corrected this to avoid any more unintentional all-nude productions.
I was finally ready to start filming Frankie and Johnny. As a director I had worked with so many up-and-coming actors, but these two were superstars. I couldn’t deny that I was a little nervous, but most of all I was tickled and excited to be part of the project. Sometimes my wife and I would sit in bed and I would say, “Honey, I’m directing Al Pacino tomorrow. Can you believe it?” I also was thrilled because I was under the impression that Michelle and Al would come to the set with an acting shorthand in place because they had worked together on Scarface. I had seen Scarface and thought they had a nice chemistry together. You can imagine my surprise when I brought in Michelle and asked her about Al.
“I’ve never met him,” she said.
“What are you talking about? I saw Scarface. You played the girl?”
“Yes, but he never talked to me off the set or out of character. Nobody ever introduced him to me,” she said. In her defense she was only in her early twenties and didn’t know very much about the movie business.
These are the kinds of stories that make you just shake your head and wonder.
“You did a whole movie with a man and never met him?”
“Yes,” she said.
I had to fix this right away. So Michelle and Al officially met on Frankie and Johnny. They became very supportive of each other during the shoot. One day I remember her brother was in a car accident and she was upset about it. Al was particularly sensitive to her that day. Another day Al was on edge because he was going to the Academy Awards. (He wouldn’t claim an Oscar until a year later, 1992, when he won for Scent of a Woman.) Michelle was very nice to him and kept him calm nearly all day long. They respected each other and protected each other as good stars should do.
Kissing was another matter. Michelle is gorgeous, but her skin is quite fragile and fair. Al, even after a shave, usually sports a five o’clock shadow because he is comfortable that way. So their kissing scenes were tricky to navigate. After three or four takes, Michelle would break out in a rash from his rough stubble. The makeup department would have to come in and put lotion on her to protect her face. So sometimes the kissing scenes took longer than others. However, I think one of the best kisses I ever shot was when we were on location at the New York flower mart. Associate producer Nick Abdo and I were pitching ideas about how to show their big on-screen kiss. I wanted flowers in the background, but I was having trouble getting the right angle. Nick suggested having a truck pull up behind them so a worker could open the door to the truck to reveal dozens of beautiful floral arrangements just as Frankie and Johnny came together to kiss. So that’s what we shot. I think that is one of my talents as a director: When I hear a good idea I can recognize and appreciate it without getting my ego hurt that it wasn’t my idea. When I see that scene now on television, it gives me goose bumps. As a director you are always looking for a new way to reveal a kiss, and this worked very well for me thanks to Nick’s suggestion.
The play was intimate, and I wanted to maintain that feeling between Frankie and Johnny on the big screen. However, that was a lot to ask of Al and Michelle as actors. Many of the scenes had just the two of them and required multiple takes. One of the last scenes we shot was scene 105, in which Johnny calls up a classical radio station and asks them to repeat the song “Clair de lune.” The scene ran about five minutes, and featured only Michelle and Al, so it was unusually intense to direct. It took five long days to shoot, so I made T-shirts for the crew that said “I survived scene 105.” But Al and Michelle were professionals and never complained. They would stay as long as I needed them on the set.
I, however, lost my temper while filming the infamous scene. It was very important for me to get the scene right. As I was filming one of the producers’ mobile phones went off. I walked over, picked up the phone, and threw it against the soundstage wall. It hit the wall and bounced off, breaking into many pieces. I am not normally a screamer or a man who loses his cool at work or at home, but in this case I just lost it. Later I apologized and we got her a new phone. But I remember being furious at the time that people’s phones were ruining my picture.
The supporting cast included the very talented duo Nathan Lane and Kate Nelligan. Some people said Kate was going to be trouble, but she was not at all. My good luck charm Hector Elizondo played the manager of the diner where Al and Michelle worked. As always Hector was so consistently reliable and helpful that I was very happy he could be a part of the film. In the diner Al was a short-order cook and, although it was not essential, he wanted on-the-job cooking lessons. So I took him to Vitello’s, my favorite neighborhood Italian restaurant in North Hollywood. My actor-friend Steve Restivo owned the restaurant at the time and let Al spend some time in the kitchen training with the other chefs. Al worked two or three nights. He became a master at chopping celery, and he came up with great ideas for other things, such as carving a flower from a potato and having Johnny give it to Frankie. The restaurant patrons at Vitello’s could see into the kitchen as they were escorted to their tables. Some of them had to do a double take when they saw Al dressed in a chef’s uniform behind the stove. “Since when does Al Pacino work at Vitello’s?” one woman said.
I got to know both Michelle and Al pretty well on the picture, which was helpful in building their characters. Michelle has large, strong hands, and she doesn’t think they are particularly pretty. In the film I had her co-workers at the diner coming up to her and without saying a word, just handing her a jar and watching her open it. Al and Michelle worked differently in terms of preparing and mastering a scene. Al liked to do a lot of takes, almost obsessively,
without even pondering that a scene might require just a few. I had to learn to respect his process because that was just the way he did things, even if it took eighteen or nineteen takes to get a scene right.
Michelle, on the other hand, was usually happy with the fourth or fifth take of a scene. Sometimes Michelle would bring magazines so she could sit off-camera and have something to do while Al was doing his nineteenth take. We even joked with Al that members of the crew would bet on what take would be the one in which he felt he got it right. But the truth was we couldn’t argue with him because on several occasions we saw him get it right on the twentieth take by delivering a moment that was absolutely brilliant. Then we would all look at each other and say, in happy disbelief, “Of course. He’s Al Pacino!”
In my breeziest moments I felt like this was any other movie and I was just doing my job well. But the reality was that this was a tricky picture with two gigantic stars. People who come to see an Al Pacino or Michelle Pfeiffer movie expect the very best. Luckily I had Dante Spinotti as my cinematographer. He had worked with me on Beaches and knew how to light a scene beautifully. Dante spoke mostly in Italian and looked like a chef. He taught me about art and lighting, and he made me a better director. Albert Brenner, my innovative production designer, created a beautiful set. Transforming the two-person play into something like a hundred-person movie was challenging but creatively exciting for all of us. One day we were shooting on a soundstage and we opened up the big door and drove several cars by to create street traffic. It was just a simple thing, but it worked well in adding another layer of sound.
To do the music for the film I was lucky enough to get Marvin Hamlisch, whom I had met years earlier at summer camp. When I went to Camp Onibar, my two sisters went to Camp Geneva, the all-girls camp nearby. When my mother would talk about Camp Geneva, all she could do was rave about the impressive theater productions. My sister Ronny was the drama counselor, and she produced the shows. Penny was a bad waitress at the camp and was constantly dropping food on the heads of the campers she didn’t like. But the real reason the shows were so good was that a sixteen-year-old counselor named Marvin Hamlisch wrote them. All summer camps should be so lucky as to have Hamlisch on the creative team for their musicals.
Marvin and I discussed what type of music would fit the plot of Frankie and Johnny. One of the studio executives cautioned me not to let Marvin put in “too many violins” and make the movie too upscale because, after all, it was a love story between a short-order cook and a waitress. But I disagreed. I said, “You mean poor people don’t hear violins when they fall in love? What do they hear? Accordions? I don’t think so. I think we all hear violins when we fall in love, no matter how much money is in our wallets.” I enjoyed working with Marvin to find the right musical combination for a story about two lost souls who have given up on love until they find each other. We needed the music to suggest a feeling of hope.
For most actors, doing publicity is not a favorite thing. To say Michelle and Al would have preferred getting a root canal to doing publicity is pretty darn close. For me sports is a big touchstone, so sometimes I made Al and Michelle do a little ritual together before we shot a difficult scene. For good luck we would put our hands together, on top of one another and yell “Frankie and Johnny” before we broke our grips. I did it during the shoot to signify that we were a team no matter what, and we had to be there for each other. When it came time to do the publicity tour, I knew Al was a little nervous. He loves acting, but not talking about himself. Right before we did the first press conference, he came over to Michelle and me and said, “Can we do that hand-holding thing?” We did. The three of us stood in a circle, put our hands on top of one another, and yelled “Frankie and Johnny” before we broke to do the press conference. It was hokey, but it made us relax—and smile.
When we wrapped the film I think we were all happy. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always line up perfectly to support you, and that is what happened with Frankie and Johnny. It came out the weekend of the Supreme Court hearings involving Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, and a widely broadcast case of possible sexual harassment. Interest in Coke cans with pubic hair trumped the interest in my love story. The film’s soft opening weekend was no one’s fault, and nobody could have predicted it. All we could do was sit back and watch as people stayed home to view the scandalous hearing on television instead of going out to see Frankie and Johnny. Despite the low box office returns, we received some good reviews.
Terrence Rafferty of The New Yorker wrote, “We understand why romance and comedy make an ideal inevitable couple.” Rolling Stone called it a “perfect love story.” Another reviewer said it was a romantic comedy for people who don’t like romantic comedies. Yes, there were still a few reviewers who said Michelle was too pretty to play Frankie. However, I had tried something new. Even though the movie didn’t make a ton of money, I was happy with the way it turned out.
When we finished I wondered what to do again. With a television series you can have a steady job for years. As a movie director you have to make a new choice every year or two. So when Frankie and Johnny came out, I was fifty-seven years old. I wondered exactly how many movies I would make before I should retire. Would someone tell me when it was time? Would I figure it out myself? I wasn’t sure, but after Frankie and Johnny was completed, I knew I wanted to direct another picture. Someone gave me an erotic book by Anne Rice about an S and M island called Exit to Eden. I read the book and liked it. Suddenly I was about to enter my true experimental period as a director. My wife read the book, turned white, and said, “Are you kidding me?”
17. EXIT TO EDEN
Taking a Wrong Turn into the Land of S and M
SO THERE I WAS, with a mask covering my face, standing at an S and M party in Hollywood.
I was there doing research for my next movie, Exit to Eden, which was based on the book written by Anne Rampling, otherwise known as the queen of all vampire writers, Anne Rice. I didn’t know much about the underground S and M world, so I contacted a woman who from time to time was my doubles tennis partner. I knew that in addition to having excellent ground strokes, she worked as a professional dominatrix. When I told her I wanted to do research on the subject, she offered to take me to a party. She said celebrities and other people in show business didn’t want to be recognized at these kinds of parties, so they often wore masks. She gave me one to wear to the party. That night as I was getting dressed and putting on my mask, my wife peered up from bed over the pages of her latest P. D. James novel.
“Where are you going again exactly?” she asked.
“It’s an S and M party,” I said.
“In a nightclub?” she asked.
“I think it’s someone’s house,” I said.
“Do people spank each other there in full view? Like in the living room?” she said.
“I’m not sure. I’ll find out,” I said.
“Why do you want to do this movie? It seems silly and unnecessary,” she said. “And kind of strange. You are going to get killed by the press when they find out Mr. Happy Days is doing a movie about bondage.”
“I’m in the mood to do something different,” I said. Alex Rose, who had produced Nothing in Common, Overboard, and Frankie and Johnny with me, had suggested Exit to Eden and said she would come onboard to produce it.
“Okay. Suit yourself. Have a good time and remember to turn on the burglar alarm when you get back,” Barbara said, returning to her mystery book.
So that night I went to the party, thinking I was completely in disguise, on a secret mission to collect background information for my movie. I loved that I could go from room to room without anyone knowing who I was. At one point I went out on the patio where two women were smoking cigarettes.
“I’m ready to go home,” said one woman. “How about you?”
“As soon as Garry Marshall comes. I hear he’s coming to do research for a new movie about an S and M island, and I want to see him,” she said. “Maybe w
e can be in it.”
I ran over to my friend and said, “We’re not so undercover! They know we’re here.”
The truth was that I was again in the mood for something different. I adore love stories, and I felt like I had done so many in a row in different settings: everything from love between a fry chef and a waitress to love between a prostitute and a corporate raider. I thought love on an S and M island seemed like a new direction. Initially I conceived Exit to Eden as a serious romance with some comedy moments. Its turn in a completely different direction is simply what happens sometimes in Hollywood. You can’t predict all the twists and turns of making a movie. You just have to hold on tight during the ride.
Soon the announcement was in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter that Garry Happy Days Marshall would direct a new movie about an S and M island. An independent film company called Savoy was putting up the money. I was excited about the casting of Dana Delany in the starring role. Dana was best known for starring in the television series China Beach. She was now ready to shed her “good girl” image and take on a role that required full frontal nudity. Plus, she got to spank her costar. She hoped that this movie would do for her what the very sexy feature Basic Instinct had done for Sharon Stone.
When it came to casting an actor to play opposite Dana, I had a very tough time. I couldn’t find a mainstream actor who wanted to get spanked by a woman on the big screen. So many actors who I thought would be good in the role flatly turned it down. I did get a meeting with one famous blond television actor who seemed very interested. We went to a bar to talk about the part. However, my interest in him began to wane when I realized that he was very drunk. He was so drunk in fact that at one point he fell off the bar stool. So I was back to the drawing board. When most American actors turned down the part, I decided to go to a different country: Australia. Up-and-coming Australian actor Paul Mercurio had starred in Baz Luhrmann’s film Strictly Ballroom. In that movie he was nothing but delightful and charming. He read the script for Exit to Eden and wasn’t afraid of taking on the part or the nudity that came with it. I finally had my match for Dana Delany.
My Happy Days in Hollywood Page 20
