Rebels on the Backlot (61 page)

The shoot, Mr. Russell decided, wouldn’t be a typical Hollywood affair. It would be an intimate, personal experience for a handful of actors otherwise accustomed to populating magazine covers and award ceremonies. Both the movie and the set would be extensions of Mr. Russell’s own uncensored, often unpredictable personality, and an opportunity for him to explore profound spiritual questions that have preoccupied him for years. (Indeed, the original idea for the movie was based on Buddhist theories Mr. Russell first learned in college from Robert Thurman, Uma Thurman’s father.) “The whole thing is an existential meditation,” Mr. Russell explained in one of several interviews through the making of the film. But the experience turned out to be no blissed-out meditation session. To get the performances he was after, Mr. Russell did all he could to raise the level of tension on set, unapologetically goading, shocking, and teasing his actors. Sometimes these techniques prompted reactions that were less than photogenic. And in perhaps the most un-Hollywood move of all, Mr. Russell allowed a reporter to watch.

April 2003: The Headlock

From the beginning, Mr. Russell knew exactly what he wanted to create with
I
Huckabees
. The trouble was, few others were able to grasp what that was. Many who read the script said they could not understand it, and several studios—Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros., Fox, all led by people who say they are fans of Mr. Russell’s—turned it down. (Later, some of the actors who went on to star in the film said that the script had never made sense to them; they simply trusted Mr. Russell’s vision.) But now the seasoned producer Scott Rudin has joined the project, the mini-studio Fox Searchlight has signed on, and a British financier named Michael Kuhn has agreed to finance it for $18 million. So the movie is, at last, in preproduction.

Better yet, some of the biggest actors are involved. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow have signed on to play eager-to-succeed employees at a department store chain called Huckabees. Mark Wahlberg will play a firefighter traumatized by 9/11, while Jason Schwartzman will be a frustrated young environmental activist. Each of these characters suffers from some form of spiritual malaise and will hire Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin, a pair of “existential detectives,” to investigate. Isabelle Huppert will play the detectives’ glamorous French nemesis, a mysterious force for chaos who equates life with pain and suffering.

Except that the cast is falling apart. Gwyneth Paltrow drops out because, Mr. Russell says, she still hasn’t dealt with the death of her father. Nicole Kidman expresses interest, but can’t get out of
The Stepford Wives.
Jennifer Aniston becomes and then unbecomes a possibility. Naomi Watts, Mr. Russell’s original choice, frees herself from scheduling problems and after some brief drama—she and Ms. Kidman are close friends—is finally cast.

And then Jude Law quits (the explanation Mr. Russell hears is that he needs to make a big-budget movie because of an impending divorce settlement; Mr. Law’s representatives deny that money was a factor). Mr. Russell is devastated: instead of doing his movie, Mr. Law has decided to take a role offered by Christopher Nolan
(Memento)
.

At a Hollywood party, Mr. Russell, a lean, muscular forty-six-year-old with dark, lanky hair, runs into Mr. Nolan and—in full view of the party guests—puts him in a headlock. Wrapping his arm around Mr. Nolan’s neck, Mr. Russell demands that his fellow director show artistic solidarity and give up his star in order to save
Huckabees.
(In the meantime, Mr. Russell has met with Jim Carrey as a possible replacement.) The next day Mr. Law calls Mr. Russell from a boat while crossing the Atlantic and discusses his
Huckabees
role at length, never mentioning Mr. Nolan or his project. The headlock story makes the rounds in Hollywood.

July 9, 2003: Almost Naked Lunch

Filming has begun, and on a suburban street in the Woodland Hills section of the San Fernando Valley the
Huckabees
operation has taken over a simple split-level house with rounded shrubs in the front. A tent has been set up in the front yard for video monitors and director’s chairs.

But Mr. Russell is almost never in the usual director’s position behind the monitor. Giddy and childlike, he rolls on the ground, dances, does push-ups, and shouts at the actors with a megaphone. “I never want it to end,” he whispers. Mr. Russell starts the day wearing a suit, but it’s slowly coming off: first the jacket, then the shirt. Also, he keeps rubbing his body up against the women and men on the set—actors, friends, and visitors.

Perhaps Mr. Russell is trying to free his actors to be as outrageous or ridiculous as he is. The script will require the actors to risk embarrassing themselves thoroughly: Isabelle Huppert is to perform a sex scene while covered in mud, Mark Wahlberg must repeatedly punch himself in the face, Jude Law will vomit into his own hands, and Naomi Watts will essentially be driven crazy by her own physical beauty.

The scene at hand is a climactic moment in Mr. Law’s character’s breakdown, requiring the actor to cry and tear at his clothes. After several takes in which Mr. Law says the lines he has memorized, Mr. Russell is now yelling at him with new lines, even as the camera rolls. Mr. Law, exhausted, finally ad-libs a string of expletives, shrieking and beating his fists into the grass. “I am lost in the wilderness!” he cries. In character (or maybe not), Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Tomlin look on in pained sympathy.

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.