I Blame Dennis Hopper Read online

  I told Gus, “I need to emotionally prepare again. It will have to be something different. I’m going to listen to some music. Can I have a minute?” It was one of those moments on set in which you’re trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat and the producers start pointing to watches and talking about overtime, and the director has to make a decision if it’s worth it.

  Gus said, “Take all the time you need.”

  Emotional preparation is not my strong suit, but I grabbed my Walkman and found one of my mix tapes with the theme song to the movie Alive. I hoped this soundtrack, which evoked so many nostalgic memories for me, would conjure the emotions I needed to re-create what had happened so organically.

  I skated, and I listened. I was circling the rink and could see that Gus was as calm as could be. The producers had their heads in their hands. I must have skated that rink for ten minutes until I had it. I nodded to Gus, and we filmed it, and that’s what’s in the movie. It wasn’t inspired, only the first take had that, but the second take was as close as possible to the original version.

  What’s important is that this was my first technical collaboration with a film director. Before that, I just showed up and was emotional; I didn’t worry about technical things. Gus taught me about how having the right lens was important. How you could calibrate your performance to the size of the lenses, meaning how big your face was going to be on-screen and how much emotion you would see. It’s pointless to cry in a wide shot, for instance. You’ll never see it. Another thing he did that was very helpful was to explain what the shot was going to be “by the numbers”—the numbers that sync up to where the camera moves—and how the positioning of the camera could help me with my performance.

  I was acting for the camera, and the camera became my friend. Gus picked up on my interest and began to explain the shots to me, and the decisions that were behind them. One day when we were shooting a scene and he wasn’t sure where to put the camera, he said, “Illeana, if you were shooting this what would you do?” I loved his use of overhead shots, which he used a lot in Drugstore Cowboy. That final overhead of Matt Dillon, as I said, is a killer. I said, “Gus, I think we should go with an overhead,” and he laughed, but that’s what we did. It was the first time a director took my suggestion, and it made me more invested in the scene.

  I had another scene that was very technically complicated with lots of camera tracking, extras passing me, etc. It ends with a close-up of my taking a phone call in which I learn that my brother is dead. I have to go from laughing to crying in an instant, with the camera landing inches from my face. I knew there was only one way I could get to the scene emotionally. I asked Gus if he could be off camera and tell me something very specific about my own brother, and then hand me the phone. My reaction, which is in the movie, came from Gus’s telling me that. It was this combination of acting with and for the director that I think made my character, Janice, so memorable. You think of a documentary like Grey Gardens and part of what makes it work is the off-camera relationship Edie Bouvier is having with the Maysles brothers, Albert and David, who are filming her. Some days I felt that I was in a documentary about the death of my brother with Gus as my interviewer/director; other days I was in a movie playing scenes with my brother, Matt Dillon, or with Nicole Kidman as his killer. But to the audience I was the character they related to—because I was always outside commenting to them on how I really felt about everyone they were watching. To Die For crystallized an on-screen performance with which I would forever become identified. I was someone who, like Mike Nichols had said to me when I had asked for his autograph, was both inside and outside the movie at the same time.

  When the film was over, I gave Gus an antique toy gun. Through Marty, I’d got to know Sam Fuller. He directed such classics as Steel Helmet and Pickup on South Street, plus my beloved The Big Red One. On set, Sam had always fired a gun for action and for cut. The toy gun I gave Gus was a symbol of what one great director did—my gift to another great director. Gus’s gift to me was a picture he painted of three houses falling from the sky. On the back he wrote, “Be your own flying saucer. Rescue yourself.” It became my motto, especially as I began my own writing and directing career working with the most difficult actress I have ever come across: me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A Woman’s Picture

  Grace of My Heart premieres at the Venice Film Festival. Allison Anders and I are laughing because our luggage, along with the gorgeous gowns we were planning to wear, did not make it in on time for our opening.

  The collaborative experience of working with Gus Van Sant was exhilarating. It inspired me to want to make more movies with the winning combination of To Die For: great scripts with ensemble casts that blended an indie spirit with the sheen of studio filmmaking. With Marty’s encouragement I began bringing him story ideas, plays, writers, and directors, developing scripts with him to executive-produce through his company, Cappa.

  Get out your handkerchiefs. This is going to be weepy. This is a story about a woman named Edna Buxton who wants to be a singer-songwriter but finds that being a wife, mother, lover to the men in her life keeps getting in the way of that dream. Her manager, Joel Millner, creates Denise Waverly out of Edna, and she becomes successful. But it’s not enough to be the heart behind the hits.

  Edna wants to hear her own voice singing her own music and her own words. She holds fast to that dream and finally finds her voice and makes a hit record. Denise Waverly didn’t know that she had to understand loss, pain, and suffering and have this wealth of experience before she could embark on her own journey as an artist. At the end of the story, she learns that a woman’s journey is eternal. There are no road maps. Denise’s story—it was called Grace of My Heart—was pretty close to mine. Mine began with its writer and director, who will always be the grace of my heart, Allison Anders. And so Grace of My Heart began, and in some ways, it has never ended. Long after the filming of the movie, I have remained close with Allison, as in a really, really long female road movie.

  The road movie of Grace began, of course, with traveling. I’d been invited to The Sundance Film Festival as a writer/director to screen my short film The Perfect Woman, which I had made right after Alive. The plot of The Perfect Woman centers on thirty different women—from Martha Plimpton to Brooke Smith to Jane Adams to me, all saying what they imagine the “perfect” thing is a man would want to hear. It played in many festivals, but for me the most significant was Sundance, because that’s where I first saw Allison Anders’s Gas Food Lodging.

  The greatest power of any film is to make you walk out of it and think, “I don’t know who the director is, but somehow she knows me.” Well, I walked out of Gas Food Lodging thinking I don’t know who Allison Anders is, but somehow I have to convince this lady to make a movie with me. Gas Food Lodging seemed like an updated take on the melodrama. Her damaged but strong heroines were a force to be reckoned with. Funny, fearless, and sexy.

  Marty had given me some interesting advice after Cape Fear. Or he cursed me, I don’t know which, because his advice turned out to be accurate. He said, “I think the problem you are going to have in your career is that you are always going to be more interesting than your material. So you’re going to have to seek out directors who understand how to use you, and to write the part around you, rather than your playing the part. If you find that director,” he said, “I will help you get that movie made.” Now, at the time, Marty was not really known as a “woman’s director” producing “sensitive women’s pictures.” That was about to change.

  After Sundance, I said, “I think I found the director. Her name is Allison Anders.”

  I first met Allison at the kind of place you’d actually see someone stop in a road-trip movie: a groovy diner in Santa Monica called Cafe 50’s. I’m sure I was wearing a ’60s A-line type dress, because it was a phase I was in that hasn’t ended, and I’m sure Allison was wearing a Mexican embroidered dress, since that’s all she ever wears. If I called Alli
son right now, she would be wearing a Mexican embroidered dress. The minute I saw Allison (well after she finished hugging me, because she’s a hugger; thank God I had so much hugging experience from Alive) I realized that everything about her, from her flaming red hair to her tattoos to her patchouli oil, was cool. She is one cool chick, but she also radiates a warmth that I instantly connected to. Usually when you’re an actress sitting down with a director, you’re putting on an act of some kind, showing off about how many movies you’ve done or how confident and poised you are. But Allison was so honest and vulnerable about her life that you couldn’t help meeting her halfway. We swapped stories about our relationships, love, marriage, breakups, living in California vs. living in New York. Just as I had hoped, she turned out to be a movie and music buff. It seemed like there wasn’t a book, a movie, or a record—down to an obscure 45 of Mary Hopkin’s “Goodbye”—that we didn’t both love.

  It was like going back in time and meeting the best friend I never had in high school: You like Sylvia Plath? I love Sylvia Plath. Oh, my God, I was just talking about Patty Duke in Me, Natalie! Yes! Paul is my favorite Beatle, too!

  Every good road trip movie involves fate. You meet the right person at the right time and say the right thing. Allison was asking about how I had met Marty, and I told her we had met at the Brill Building. The Brill Building had played a significant role in our relationship. I knew all about the Brill Building. I knew the gleaming marble and brass lobby where I went to work every day for my former boss Peggy Siegal. I knew its musical history as the original Tin Pan Alley and later as the vortex of rock and roll from 1958 to 1964, turning out the greatest songs of our time. I knew that Sidney Poitier had supposedly slept on the roof when he was a young and homeless actor.

  It turned out that the Brill Building was another point of interest that Allison and I shared. She was an expert on everyone who had ever walked its halls and cut records there. Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Ellie Greenwich, Leiber and Stoller. Speaking of the halls, fun fact: Every floor of the Brill Building makes a continuous square loop, and the floors are linoleum so you could easily roll pianos around. Fun fact: I learned how to roller-skate there. Marty and Thelma Schoonmaker were editing Goodfellas on the third floor and I would roll past them, cruising the wonderful linoleum halls.

  Allison and I hugged goodbye, and after this incredibly fun first meeting … we decided to make a movie about Anne Sexton, an alcoholic poet who killed herself! Ultimately, there were a lot of rights issues with the Anne Sexton estate, and we were getting very frustrated that it wasn’t moving forward, so we started talking more and more about doing another movie. Maybe something that would be a little more up. Everything was leading us mysteriously back to the Brill Building. Allison sent me a bunch of TV programs, music documentaries, and videos about the California music scene, including Shindig!, Hullabaloo, T.A.M.I. Show, and a documentary about the Brill Building called Girl Groups: The Story of a Sound, which explored some of the darker aspects of that history. I started reading an interesting book by Ronnie Spector and Vince Waldron called Be My Baby, about her life with Phil Spector. We were immersed in girl-group history and the sacrifices so many girl singers and songwriters had made on their way to “making it.”

  Allison and I both felt like female artists who didn’t quite fit in a mold. Maybe this movie would be about everything that was happening in our lives as women—both professionally and emotionally—but with the Brill Building as a backdrop. We had three important things in common: We loved music, we loved melodramas, and we loved movies from the ’70s. I said to Allison, “I want to make a movie that looks like it was made in the ’70s. Like Paul Mazursky made it.” I was so influenced by women’s performances from the ’70s; I grew up watching them on-screen, thinking, That’s what acting is. Jill Clayburgh throwing up in An Unmarried Woman, when she finds out her husband is leaving her. Gena Rowlands having a nervous breakdown in A Woman Under the Influence, Ellen Burstyn crying and singing in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Jane Fonda having her first orgasm in Coming Home. And I don’t want to leave out the great Madeline Kahn and Teri Garr, who both managed brilliantly to combine comedy with pathos. These performances were imprinted on my brain. They took chances, and that’s something I wanted to do. When I first saw Allison’s work, I knew that those were the kind of movies she was making from a strong female perspective. She followed up Gas Food Lodging with the equally spirited Mi Vida Loca, about girl gangs in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles.

  Still, it would have to have some style, some romance, maybe a man or two to cry over. In the mid-’90s melodramas were thought to be old-fashioned and out of date. Douglas Sirk films such as Imitation of Life and All That Heaven Allows weren’t as highly regarded as they are now. They were thought to be high camp, steeped in sex, shot in lurid color—larger-than-life situations. Allison and I loved melodramas because the stories, even though they were big, were told without cynicism. The plots were motivated purely by emotions—love, sex, greed, jealousy, revenge, etc. In our research for Grace, Allison turned me on to Bette Davis in A Stolen Life and now my favorite Douglas Sirk film, There’s Always Tomorrow. I turned her on to Leave Her to Heaven and Nick Ray’s Bigger Than Life. I don’t think I ever got her onboard for Autumn Leaves. Joan Crawford was too camp even for Allison. In the much-loved gay-themed film I did called Grief, there’s a line written especially about me by director Richard Glatzer: “Maybe you are a gay man trapped in a woman’s body?” Marty used to joke, “If you’re a gay man, what does that make me?”

  The road trip continued. Allison went home to California to start writing the script, and I went back to New York to co-produce, along with my partner Ruth Charney, and shoot Search and Destroy. Then I went to Canada to shoot To Die For. We had a delay on set, so I sat down in my trailer and read the entire script while listening to Neil Young. I put the script down, and I wrote in my journal: “I just read Allison’s script and it made me cry. I think it could be really great.” Then I wrote, “Maybe Matt will walk through the door, and ask me about it so I can say, Oh, this? Why it’s a movie I’m working on with Allison Anders. Maybe you could play a part in it.”

  When I first mentioned Matt Dillon to Allison, I’m not sure if he was who she had in mind to play the Brian Wilson–type character, Jay Phillips. Matt’s the epitome of East Coast Cool, but I thought of him immediately when I read it. Aside from being an amazing actor who is totally dedicated to his craft, Matt is quite the music expert. He and I had developed a great rapport and chemistry on To Die For that I thought would translate on-screen to his playing my husband and musical mentor. Jay Phillips also had to deal with the phenomenon of his success and the burden that it placed on his music, putting him in a box. I wondered if Matt could explore those same feelings on-screen. Personally, I couldn’t remember a time in my viewing life when I wasn’t seeing Matt Dillon in a movie. Overnight, he became a part of the lexicon of American girl-crush movies with My Bodyguard and Little Darlings. And he followed those up with The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, and The Flamingo Kid, which cemented his persona. Let’s be clear, Matt is a movie star. That charisma is there off-screen, too. Of all the folks I’ve worked with, I would say that only Matt Dillon is a movie star both on-screen and off. When you walk next to him, everything moves in slow motion as people turn to stare. The public reactions he got from men and women never ceased to amaze me, yet he always handled himself with absolute composure and aplomb.

  I have to mention my favorite interaction Matt had with a fan because it illustrates not only the kind of person he is but also the impact of movie stars, and how we believe they are our saviors. We were out in a bar during the shooting of To Die For, and a guy came up to Matt and asked him for his autograph. Matt was totally obliging and just about to sign his name when the guy said, “Can you just write, ‘To Debbie—I’m really sorry for everything—don’t give up on him—Much Love, Matt Dillon.’”

  And I watched as Matt
wrote it out exactly as the guy dictated, didn’t even look up, and handed it back to the guy, who smiled at him gratefully, “Hey, thanks a lot, Matt.”

  And Matt said, “Hey, good luck, man.” And he meant it: Go in peace, my son. Make that relationship work. That’s what the movies do for you. They give you hope. God bless Matt Dillon. That’s what I say. Now go watch Crash, Wild Things, or any movie he’s been in.

  I got Matt interested in Grace of My Heart pretty much the way I fantasized I would except that we had clothes on. That was a joke! I always say: I played Matt’s sister, and I played his wife, and let me tell you, playing his wife was a lot more fun. When we eventually shot the scene in Grace in which Matt asks me—while we are recording “God Give Me Strength”—if I want to go home with him, I’m supposed to think about it and finally say, “Yes.” But it was hard not to laugh, because I could feel Allison next to the camera almost yelling, “Yes! Yes! Go home with him! What are you, nuts?” We were girls, after all, and only human. Sigh.

  I wanted Matt to read the script, because I knew he would be so great as this character, but I didn’t want to put a burden on our friendship, so I came up with a plan. The cover of the script had a very enticing image of a sexy girl group called the Shangri-Las–remembered best for the song “Leader of the Pack.” I knew the image would catch Matt’s eye, so I deliberately put the script on the bedside table in my hotel room, hoping he would notice it. Actors are nosy, and they can smell scripts, and sure enough, he spotted it, picked it up, and started to flip through it.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  And I brushed it off, “Oh, it’s a musical about the Brill Building. Nothing you’d be interested in.”

  Matt’s eyes lit up. He loved music almost more than we did. He mentioned the music film he did—Cameron Crowe’s Singles—about the Seattle music scene, in which he played a grunge-rock musician.