Watch Me: A Memoir (22 page)

Before I start any movie, I amass whatever information I can about my character, piece it together, and usually arrive at some conclusion. There are the obvious questions, like the character’s social position, her auspices, and her age. But also the less evident ones—her health, her choices, her hopes and dreams and disappointments, her secrets. Is she still a sexual being? Or has she given up the ghost? Much of who we are is reflected in the way we dress. So these choices are very important.

If I am working on a period movie, I do my best to research the day-to-day life of an actual person living under circumstances similar to my character’s. When I made
Enemies, A Love Story
, I read Primo Levi and watched Alain Resnais’s
Night and Fog
and documentaries on the Nazi atrocities from the BBC. I spoke to survivors of the war and spent days in the Hasidic neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, observing the behavior of the residents and going to synagogue. But then there is the moment when you must trust your preparation and allow your imagination to take over in order for a character to exist. In a way, it’s like conjuring up ghosts; but with a character like Tamara, who had been through so much, I had to accept the heavy burden of responsibility for what had happened in her past in order to represent her.

Paul Mazursky was a man of powerful emotions, knowing and compassionate, funny and wise. He would literally jump up and down if he liked something you were doing. I’ve never
seen a man happier in his work than Paul on
Enemies.
He worked closely with Pato Guzman, his production designer, and Fred Murphy, our cinematographer from
The Dead.
We had the luxury of rehearsing for several weeks in New York before we started shooting. Albert Wolsky was the costume designer, and between him and David Forrest, my makeup artist, we came up with a look for Tamara’s first meeting with Herman Broder that was both sad and vulgar—in a pale pink dress, hollow-cheeked, with dark circles under my eyes and a bright red mouth.

In April 1989, before we left for New York, Paul had arranged for those of us who lived in L.A. to go to a seder at a house in the Fairfax district that belonged to a woman called Magda Simon. Her story was surreal, full of terror and extraordinary courage. Captured as a young girl, she had been incarcerated and tortured at Auschwitz. Paul told me that Magda had lost her hearing, having contracted diphtheria in the camp.

When the door to her house opened, I was surprised. Instead of the person I’d expected—a broken soul or someone physically demolished—there appeared a good-looking, healthy blonde in her late sixties or early seventies, dressed in white and turquoise. She introduced us to her “self-portraits”—big imposing oil paintings of cats imprisoned behind bars, on fire, or both—hanging on her walls. That night our group joined six survivors at her dinner table; Magda welcomed us and led us in a short prayer. As we ate, they each laid out their personal histories for us to hear, one more stilling than the next—tales of love and fortitude and courage, all told with a lack of tears, as if they had gone too deep to cry for what was lost, including themselves.

A balding man in a cable-knit sweater told of being shot at by a Nazi firing squad as a child, lined up with his family against the wall of their barn. He had lain among their lifeless bodies until night came, when he escaped into the countryside just days before the liberation. The survivors all wore bold patterns and bright colors, like Magda. When the meal ended, each dish was polished clean.

For the first few weeks, we shot the big exterior scenes on the Lower East Side in New York, then flew to Montreal for studio work. It was summer, a season of celebration for all Canadians. They were out in force, in the cafés, by the lakes. The city was on vacation. Joan Buck had given me Leonard Cohen’s telephone number and had told him to expect my call; he was lovely to me, taking me out to play pool and to dine on corned-beef sandwiches. Laila came to Montreal as my assistant and introduced me to Tom Schiller, an
SNL
alumnus. Tom contrived to visit our set in the full costume of a rabbi, complete with
payot
and top hat. Mazursky was at first honored to receive the guest, then shocked, then vastly amused when Schiller’s disguise evaporated and he flung himself into an energetic mazurka before the crew at lunchtime.

There was a comedy festival playing the length of one of the popular walk streets, and one afternoon Schiller proposed to Laila and me that we take a stroll. A number of pedestrians were ambling around—there were a few jugglers, a scattering of people telling jokes here and there. Schiller turned to me. “Let’s have a fight,” he whispered, and suddenly, with a loud groan, he smacked his hands together and careened, as if he’d been hit, into the front wall of an apartment building. I charged after him furiously and aimed several fake swipes
about his head and cheeks as he continued to clap his hands together, whimpering and simulating sounds of attack.

All at once we had an audience. An outraged woman started shouting at me, “Leave that poor man alone!” as I chased Schiller in and out of shops, comedy stores, restaurants, and discos, all the way up to the top of the street. When we were finished, we had a crowd of about fifty people. I honestly can’t remember having more fun, which I guess says something about my childish nature. But it was brilliantly unrestrained.

Ron Silver told me stories that he worked for the CIA and spoke Chinese. I was never up to checking either claim, but he was full of contradictions, and we got along quite well. None of the wives worked in scenes together until the climax of the movie, when we all find out about each other, so I rarely saw Lena off set. Her infant son was with her at the hotel, and the third wife, Margaret Sophie Stein, a lovely young Russian actress, was working when Lena and I were not on call.

The comedian Alan King, who plays the rabbi in the movie, decided that he had a crush on me and left a red rose outside my hotel room door each night. On a break from filming, Laila and I drove up to Sydenham, Ontario, to stay at our friend Dan Aykroyd’s lakeside compound. Dan had told us that he would meet us at the local gas station so that he could ferry us the last leg, a few miles, to his home. When we pulled up, he was seated on a big black Harley-Davidson, and as he led us down the leafy roads, we put Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man” on the tape machine and watched Dan bump along in front of us. A moment frozen in time.

Down several more country lanes, we found ourselves in
the clearing of a heavily wooded forest where a vast log cabin, worthy of Papa Bear, was under construction. That evening, when we went down to the lake, the water was like swimming in liquid oxygen. For some reason, Dan’s wife, Donna, was not there, but Dan was a great host. He took us in his motorboat to a funny little island way out in the deep, calm lake, where he had erected a tent. Inside were a couple of armchairs, a charming little red stuffed couch from the fifties, and a television set from the same era that had a rabbit-ear antenna and operated off a generator. There was a hefty ex-cop companion of Dan’s who fed us dinner and stayed behind to clear the debris while Dan, happy as a child, having shown us his toys, then ferried us back over the dark water to his giant’s lair in the woods.

CHAPTER 22

J
ack and I had been seeing less of each other. I had been going out with him to public events for years, and somehow we still clung to that old habit, but we were undoubtedly drifting apart. I did not often spend the night at his house. He was directing
The Two Jakes
, the sequel to
Chinatown.
On the occasions when I would go up to Mulholland Drive to see him, there was now an array of creams and perfumes by the master bathroom sink. Evidently, they did not belong to Helena or Annie. I didn’t ask whom they belonged to. It was like being a child again—don’t ask questions, you won’t get answers. I didn’t think I could handle the truth.

*  *  *

Not long after the wrap of
Enemies
, Stephen Frears spent the better part of an evening in New York telling me why I was all wrong for the movie he and Marty Scorsese were planning, based on a Jim Thompson novella called
The Grifters.
I had met Stephen that night at Boaty Boatwright’s dinner table in her apartment at the Apthorp. She was representing writers and directors at ICM. Stephen had wanted Melanie Griffith for the role of the icy con woman, Lilly Dillon, but she had passed.

I thought no more of it until a month or so later, when I was back in L.A. and received a call from Toni Howard.
“Scorsese and Frears want you to read for the part of Lilly Dillon,” she said. “I’m sending you the script.”

When I read the screenplay, I was transfixed. It was a hard, dark thriller full of twists and turns. There was a scene, however, that gave me pause, in which Lilly’s boss, Bobo, beats her so savagely with a sack of oranges that she defecates on the floor.

“I don’t want to be that woman,” I said to Toni. “It’s too explicit.”

Half an hour later, she called back. “Sue Mengers is thinking of coming back to work at William Morris. We want you to come in and talk to us.”

“Okay,” I replied, wondering what Mengers might say to me.

When I walked into the office that afternoon, Sue fixed me with a firm eye and declared matter-of-factly, “Anjelica, if Stephen Frears tells you he wants you to shit in the corner, then that’s what you must do.”

The next day I put on a red silk Missoni dress with no bra underneath. I was tempted to find a blond wig for the character, but thought they might think that was a bit over the top. I drove over to the Chateau Marmont, where Stephen was staying, and went up to his suite. It was the same room where Helmut and June Newton usually stayed when they came to town, which I took as a good omen. Marty and Stephen were sitting on the couch. After the reading, Marty left, and it was just one-on-one with Stephen. He expressed the idea that I might play Lilly in a platinum-blond wig. That was when I knew I’d gotten the part.

At our first read-through of
The Grifters
, it became very evident that I should pull up my socks and get on board—
John Cusack was playing the part of my son, Roy, and Annette Bening, a newcomer, was playing the part of his girlfriend, Myra Langtry, and she was fantastic. As for my role, Lilly was spare and neurotic and cunning and totally selfish. In the last scene of the movie, she risks all to save herself and, having committed a final, unthinkable deed, flees Roy’s apartment under cover of night.

John Cusack was great to work with, and we had a strange, slightly perplexing attraction to each other, made all the more intense because I was playing his mother. Stephen Frears was a master storyteller, and I learned a lot from working with him. He always upped my game.

I never enjoyed playing a part more—that is, actually delivering lines—than on
The Grifters.
I was nominated for a Best Actress award by the Academy. Kathy Bates won that year for a role in
Misery
that I turned down in order to do
The Grifters
, but I’ve never regretted my decision to portray Lilly Dillon. It was arguably the best role of my life.

*  *  *

During rehearsals for
The Grifters
, I received a call from Jack. “Tootie, could you come to dinner tonight?” The request had a sweet, unusual formality, and I said yes. I had a feeling something was up. We had a lovely dinner that evening, cooked by Jack’s chef. Jack was friendly, and for the first time in a long time, we had a few laughs.

“I have something to tell you,” he announced over dessert. The words came smoothly, deliberately. “Someone is gonna have a baby.”

There was a top note of pride in his voice and an odd sense of déjà vu to this moment. It reminded me of the day Dad told Tony and me about the existence of our baby brother,
Danny, when he was a toddler and we were teenagers summoned to Rome to meet him.

“Is it Rebecca Broussard?” I asked. When I said her name, Jack looked surprised. This was a girl—blond, sexy, full-lipped, and drowsy-eyed—whom I’d seen working at Helena’s new dance club in Silver Lake. Jack had been spending time there after his basketball games. She’d shown up in Aspen the winter before, as his daughter Jennifer’s friend. When I had gone to see a rough cut of
The Two Jakes
at Paramount a few days before, she had appeared in a scene playing his secretary, with a rose between her teeth. He hadn’t mentioned to me that she was in the movie, and I had experienced a mild wave of dread—the little premonition that says, “Not all is well.”

I asked Jack what he was going to do about it.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“Is she going to have the baby?” I asked.

“Yes, she’s going to have the baby. But I don’t want nothin’ to change.” I asked if he was going to stand by Rebecca, and he said, “Yes. I am the father of this child.”

“There’s only room for one of us women in this picture, and I am going to retire from it,” I said. Something like that. And then we hugged, and I wept, and felt the floor dropping out from under me, and some wave of forgiveness, and, finally, the hopelessness of a relationship that’s done, flopped, croaked, and over. I went home and cried and drank vodka all night and did the crosswords in the
Los Angeles Times
that were stacked up by the fireplace. The next day I announced the news to one of my chattier friends with the idea that everyone would be in the know by lunchtime.

*  *  *

I received a call from Bob Colbert, Jack’s business manager. “Jack’s lawyer thought that we should sit down with you sometime soon to discuss the future.” We met a few days later at Ma Maison. They sat opposite me at an outdoor table in view of the new Sofitel going up across the street.

“Anjelica,” Jack’s lawyer began the conversation loudly, above the noise of the drilling at the building site, “imagine you are a parking lot attendant and you charge two dollars an hour for parking. Well, imagine that I come in with a really expensive car—say, a Rolls-Royce. You’re gonna think maybe I owe you more than two dollars to park my car, right?” Maybe this was an analogy they’d cooked up on the way to the restaurant, but it had not occurred to me to ask Jack for money. I looked at the man and wept.