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Weaver said it was hard, but not impossible to apply her post-"Maiden" acting lessons to Gwen Demarco. "Basically I tried to give her a showgirl background, as if she just sashayed her way into the part. But I also gave her some of my own experience. I played her as if Gwen had turned down a small role in a Woody Allen film to take this series, and has never stopped thinking, 'God, did I do the wrong thing?' Twenty years later she's still in a cat suit."

Weaver herself did a walk-on in "Annie Hall" ("thanks to the kindness of Woody Allen") after turning down a larger role in it. She couldn't bear leaving "a showcase part" playing "a multiple schizophrenic who kept a hedgehog in her vagina" in her playwright pal Christopher Durang's workshop production of "Titanic." At the same time, she and Durang were appearing in a revue they coauthored, "Das Lusitania Songspiel," as "mad Midwesterners who think they know everything about Brecht and Weill and are wonderfully earnest and get all their facts wrong."

Michael Sragow Michael Sragow's column appears every Thursday in Arts & Entertainment + Archives

Weaver has no regrets about turning down the Allen role; she said the other parts "were probably two of the most fun things I've ever done." But her "Galaxy Quest" character does. "I think that Gwen always wanted to give it her all," said Weaver. "And that's how she gets hurt. Even at the computer -- as far as she's concerned, she's speaking Shakespeare. It was my idea to play her as a blond. I didn't see how Gwen could play a character like Tawny Madison without being blond. I saw her as this blond beauty who gives everything to her work but has low self-esteem because everyone treats her as a sex object who can't think. She has great confidence in how she looks, not what she says."

Seeing director Dean Parisot's previous film, the underrated "Home Fries" (one of my Top Eight for '98), made Weaver want to do "Galaxy Quest." She said the whole ensemble "dove into it with relish. My favorite may be Tony Shalhoub, squinting his eyes because he's playing an Asian, but Alan Rickman is so brilliant in it, and Tim Allen proves he has a much bigger range than people give him credit for -- when he has to become a hero, he's up for it."

Weaver is delighted to be appearing in "a good-hearted picture" that has turned into a word-of-mouth hit. But she is sorry that DreamWorks trimmed some smart and sexy jokes to land it a PG rating and a family-movie ambience. "They cut out about 10 minutes, including some of my best stuff. In the outtakes, I seduce two evil guards: One of them says, 'This is sick -- it is as if to seek pleasure with an animal,' and when I suggest to the other one that maybe he could leave us alone, he says, 'No, alien slut, on my planet we share.' Then I tell the computer to shut a section block -- it squishes them -- and I ask these piles of goo, 'Do you take me seriously now?'

"Maybe in the European version it will get put back. All of us had our more sophisticated moments removed. When the rock monster attacks Tim, and Alan tells Tim to figure out its motivation, Tim says, 'It's a damn rock monster. It doesn't have motivation.' And Alan says, 'That's your problem. You were never serious about the craft.' That much is still in the film. But then there was this hilarious bit of Alan figuring the motivation out: 'I'm a rock ... I just want to be a rock ... still ... peaceful ... tranquil.'"

Weaver surmised, "DreamWorks wanted a holiday movie, a film for kids out of school. And it was made to meet a release date, so I don't think many people at the studio honestly got a chance to see the movie and think about it before releasing it. It was like we finished it and it came out the day after." Then she caught herself and laughingly asked, "Do you think they'll be mad at me for saying this?"

But caution doesn't become her. "Acting feels amazing to me now," she said, "because you literally step off a cliff and don't know what will happen. I don't think I saw it that way before 'Death and the Maiden.' Anyway, I don't have to climb mountains or jump out of planes or bungee jump. I act, and that's as far out there as I need to get. If you're doing it right, it's scary!"
salon.com | Feb. 3, 2000

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