Rebels on the Backlot
Page 46
Mr. Russell shouts “Eeeeee! Eeeee! Keep rolling!”
Mr. Hoffman: “We’re rolling. What’s ‘Eeeeee’?” There is no response, but Mr. Law keeps emoting.
On the next take, Mr. Russell lies on the ground, just behind Lily Tomlin, but out of view of the camera. Perhaps he’s trying to add to her feeling of unease in the scene. “Most likely he was looking up my skirt,” she deadpans while watching the playback a few minutes later.
It seems impossible that a film set could feel any less formal—but come lunchtime, it does. Mr. Russell sheds the rest of his clothing, leaving only his boxers, and starts to exercise—first jumping rope, then sparring with his personal trainer, right on the sidewalk of the suburban street. Many of the actors and crew join in. They, however, keep their clothes on.
July 24, 2003: The Car Trip
It is a hot, tense day in a dried-up marsh near Los Angeles International Airport. The shoot is nearing its end. Mr. Hoffman, Ms. Tomlin, Ms. Huppert, Mr. Wahlberg, and Ms. Watts (devoid of makeup and wearing an Amish bonnet) are all crowded into an old Chevrolet for the critical scene in which they will articulate the movie’s themes: how everything in the universe is connected, and how sadness is an inevitable part of life. In an essential bit of back story, Ms. Huppert will explain how she became a pessimist because of a failed love triangle with Ms. Tomlin and Mr. Hoffman.
The actors do take after take in the crowded car, with Mr. Russell, as is his habit, constantly throwing new lines at them from a few feet away. The dialogue is poignant and bizarre at the same time, and the scene culminates with Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Tomlin weeping simultaneously and loudly.
While the cameras roll, Mr. Russell berates the actors: “Where’s the [expletive] reaction?” he swears at Mr. Hoffman.
The actors look tired. As he has throughout the shoot, Mr. Russell is touching them—a lot, and sometimes in private places. At one point, Mr. Wahlberg grabs the director’s megaphone, shouting “This man just grabbed my genitals! It is my first man-on-man contact!” At other times, the director whispers into the actresses’ ears—lewdly, they later say—before a take.
So far, the actors have been remarkably tolerant of Mr. Russell’s mischief. As Ms. Huppert later observed in a phone interview, the actors knew Mr. Russell was intentionally trying to destabilize them for the sake of their performances. “He is fascinating, completely brilliant, intelligent, and very annoying sometimes, too,” she said. They also know he has created superb films from chaotic-seeming sets before. Besides, he’s the director and the writer; now that they’ve cast their lot with him, they really don’t have a choice.
But on what is meant to be the last take of the day, Ms. Tomlin, who recently ended an exhausting run of her one-woman play, [The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe], collapses into Mr. Hoffman’s arms crying and doesn’t stop. As he embraces her, the wails grow louder and louder, and finally it becomes clear that she is not in character. After long moments, Ms. Tomlin breaks the tension by shouting at Mr. Hoffman: “You’re driving a hairpin into my head!” Everyone collapses in laughter and the take is trashed.
But the drama is not over. The car scene takes several more hours to shoot, and as the sun fades, the accumulated tension erupts. Ms. Tomlin begins shouting at Mr. Russell: she is unhappy with the way she looks. She wants to try the scene a different way. She taunts him with a few expletives and curses at the other actors too. Their patience worn, the other actors laugh at her outburst.
Later, unfolding himself from the back seat of the Chevrolet, Mark Wahlberg jokes that his next project will be a nice, easy action film.
July 31, 2003: Candid Camera
The production has moved from the dried-up swamp to the set of the detectives’ office. It is hot and cramped, and the hour is getting late. To pass the time while a shot is set up, Mr. Russell treats the crew to a description of a baby passing through the birth canal.
And then Ms. Tomlin is berating Mr. Russell again.
This time, the director turns on her angrily, calling her the crudest word imaginable, in front of the actors and crew. He shrieks “I wrote this role for you! I fought for you!” Mr. Russell ends his tirade by sweeping his arm across a nearby table cluttered with production paraphernalia. He storms off the set and back on again, continually shouting. Then he locks himself in his office, refusing to return. After an uncomfortable, set-wide pause, Ms. Tomlin goes in to apologize, and Mr. Russell returns to the shoot.
Unbeknownst to both of them, a member of the crew has videotaped his tirade. The recording makes its way around the Hollywood talent agencies. Asked about the incident later, Mr. Russell says “Sure, I wish I hadn’t done that. But Lily and I are fine.” For her part, Ms. Tomlin admits that both she and Mr. Russell lost control. “It’s not a practice on his part or my part,” she says. “I’d rather have someone human and available and raw and open. Don’t give me someone cold, or cut off, or someone who considers themselves dignified.” This must be the Zen part.
September 4, 2003: Roller Coaster Party
The shoot finished earlier in the day, at 3:15 A.M.—miraculously on schedule and on budget. For the wrap party on the Santa Monica Pier, the Huckabees production has taken over an amusement park along the Pacific, where Dustin Hoffman is chatting with his old pal, the producer Robert Evans, flanked by a couple of towering women whose assets spill out of their halter tops.
Mr. Russell is wandering around the pier in a gray suit and blue pinstripe shirt, unbuttoned, with a blinking red heart necklace slung around his neck. Everyone else is playing arcade games and riding the roller coaster under a gentle black September sky. But the director seems to be in a kind of dazed dream state, and has been that way for about a week, he says. Usually, he says, ending a film brings a mixture of sadness and relief, but this time it’s only sadness. He seems to be mourning the end of the free-wheeling universe of the Huckabees set; now he has to retreat to the solitude of an editing room to figure out exactly what his movie is. “I told you,” he tells a visitor, as if wondering how one could forget something he’d said in passing two months earlier. “This was the happiest experience of my life.”
But there are murmurings of confusion as to how the movie will turn out, even among actors who trust Mr. Russell. “I hope he has all the pieces,” observes Talia Shire, leaving the party with her son, Jason Schwartzman.
July 26, 2004: Reality Check
It is a balmy night on the lot of Twentieth Century Fox, and the Little Fox Theater is packed with leading members of the cast, some crew, several agents, and friends. Dustin Hoffman and his wife and children and their friends have come; so has a still golden-haired Jude Law and his parents. The theater hums with anticipation: it is Mr. Russell’s first film in five years; he’s locked himself in the editing room for an unusually long time; and though almost no one has yet seen the film, it is already being mentioned as a nominee for a best picture Oscar.
A half-hour late, Mr. Russell walks to the front of the theater wearing a blue suit, a red and white striped shirt, and sneakers. Compared to the manic exuberance he displayed on set, he seems relatively subdued. “Wake up, it’s a comedy,” he announces, even though his audience of insiders presumably knows as much. “We’re going to have an amphetamine mist,” he tells the crowd, playing with a strand of hair.
No one—even those involved with the film—knows quite what to expect from it. What they see is a movie that is, well, dense. Emotionally dense, and intellectually so; jammed with ideas both profound and prosaic, thick with rapid-fire dialogue about human beings and the use of petroleum. But it’s not quite the movie they shot. A few major scenes—like the one in the car, which was supposed to explain the entire movie—have been cut.
As people file out of the theater, trying to find the words to describe the movie, executives from Fox Searchlight eagerly cull reactions. Does the movie play? Do the pieces fit? But it’s hard to gauge the mood. Several audience members say they can’t even
decide if they liked the film or not.
Claudia Lewis, a production executive who has been a staunch proponent of the film, is hopeful and nervous. “We are working on some original marketing ideas,” she says. She and her colleagues know that this movie is not an easy sell.
It’s not clear if Mr. Russell is picking up on the uncertainty in the air. A few days later, he sends a euphoric e-mail message about the screening. His words are rhapsodic and earnest; he seems to be channeling the same energy with which he directed the movie: “It was such a swell night. Such good vibes in the air. I especially liked those who said the film affected them like a trippy reality drug.”
In fact, for a moment, Mr. Russell seems as if he’s never left the set.
Originally published in the New York Times, September 19, 2004. Copyright © 2004 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
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PRAISE FOR
REBELS on the BACKLOT
“Riveting tales of Hollywood hubris…. A fun read.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Like all good reporting, Rebels on the Backlot ultimately opens up its subject for debate and leaves the final verdict to the reader…. Film directors’ careers are full of second and third acts. I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of any of these guys, and I’m grateful we’ll have Sharon Waxman on hand to fill us in.”
—Salon.com
“Enjoyably dishy.”
—Variety
“Sharon Waxman is one of the finest showbiz reporters on earth…. [Rebels on the Backlot] is an exhilarating explosion in the anecdote factory, a Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride through indie cinema, a scholarly document that can stand proudly on your bookshelf alongside Peter Biskind…. Rebels on the Backlot works beautifully on several levels, starting with down-and-dirty gossip. But it’s not just gossip—Rebels adds up to a detailed study of how indie cinema really works.”
—Seattle Weekly
“A lively book with gossipy and readable stories about some obsessive guys who are as much rascals as rebels.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Rebels on the Backlot makes a case for creating a new film canon of the late 1990s Renaissance.”
—Pittsburgh Tribune
“Terrific … wildly informative and readable about the plight of the biggest young talents in modern movies…. Waxman has done an unusually fine job of painting the portraits of those filmmakers whose works make film cognoscenti want to run, not walk, the minute they open. This is about as credible an up-to-the-minute view of how the most exciting current movies are being made that you’ll find between covers.”
—Buffalo News
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HARPER PERENNIAL
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2005 by Harper-Entertainment, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
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REBELS ON THE BACKLOT. Copyright © 2005 by Sharon Waxman.
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FIRST HARPER PERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 2006.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Waxman, Sharon.
Rebels on the backlot : six maverick directors and how they
conquered the Hollywood studio system / Sharon Waxman.—1st
ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-06-054017-6
1. Motion picture producers and directors—United States—Biography. I. Title.
PN1998.2.W394 2005
791.4302′33′092273—dc22
[B] 2004059269
ISBN-10: 0-06-054018-4 (pbk.)
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