SALON

Susan Sarandon

Tuesday, Aug 17, 1999 4:00 PM UTC

“Illuminata”

In John Turturro's ambitious and arresting American tragicomedy, the actor-director invents himself an artistic tradition.

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In a world of canny operators who make movies with one eye on a demographic calculus and the other on Tina Brown and her empire of murmur, John Turturro’s integrity and attention to craft seem almost monastic. He’s the freak in the hair shirt, hand-inking illuminated manuscripts in the Mall of America. “Illuminata,” Turturro’s second film as a director (after 1992′s “Mac”), suggests that he wants to enlist himself in an artistic tradition — or invent one — that’s virtually untouched by Hollywood. Although it’s an often hilarious sexual roundelay, “Illuminata” far transcends the genre of farce. At its core, it’s a heartbreakingly beautiful tragicomedy about art, love and artifice, with a script of rare humor and complexity and some of the most enjoyably freewheeling performances in years. But there’s something quixotic, even lonely, about it too. “Illuminata” fearlessly attaches itself to the neglected legacy of classical Western theater, and the theater-derived films of Jean Renoir and Ingmar Bergman, and acts as if the Hitchcock/noir/men-with-guns cinema that so preoccupies younger filmmakers these days never existed.

Turturro stars as Tuccio, a frustrated young playwright married to Rachel (Katherine Borowitz, Turturro’s real-life spouse), the manager and star of a large and rather sloppy troupe of actors. Rachel and company are engaged at a struggling theater owned by a comically warring couple, Pallenchio (the marvelous Irish actor Donal McCann) and Astergourd (the larger-than-life Beverly D’Angelo). We are supposed to be in Manhattan, circa 1905, and there are a few historical markers scattered about — automobiles are not yet common and Ibsen is known but not universally accepted. But the script by Turturro and his friend and collaborator Brandon Cole (adapted from Cole’s stage play) is really set in an almost abstract backstage reality; it’s somewhere between Shakespeare’s time and our own, and that’s what matters. Cole’s one-name characters — Tuccio, Pallenchio, Marco, Flavio, Beppo, et al. — clearly echo the pseudo-Italian names in the Bard’s comedies, and the hilariously vainglorious actress played by Susan Sarandon is named Celimene, the beloved of Molihre’s “The Misanthrope.”

But “Illuminata” is not some dry postmodern exercise, nor is it anything like Woody Allen’s often labored Bergman imitations. If Cole and Turturro have clearly studied Bergman’s “Smiles of a Summer Night,” arguably the greatest of all film comedies, they have learned the right lessons from it. “Illuminata” teems with its own sense of life, crackles with daring, walks the tightrope between satire and pathos with a rare assuredness. When we see Rachel’s company launch into a production of “Cavalleria Rusticana” (the melodramatic play, not the melodramatic opera), it’s clearly atrocious. But we’ve already invested enough emotion in these characters, especially the graceful and dignified Rachel, that we want to like this desperate play despite ourselves. Similarly, when Old Flavio (Ben Gazzara), an aging actor who’s constantly coughing up bits of disconnected Shakespearean dialogue, begins declaiming Prospero’s closing monologue from “The Tempest,” Turturro’s camera wanders to the ludicrous Pallenchio, sitting in the orchestra. He begins to speak the lines along with Flavio, and at a single stroke we see the cuckolded theater proprietor as a tragic, not a comic figure — a failed actor with the words of a dying sorcerer locked in his heart.

When a young actor collapses and nearly dies onstage during “Cavalleria,” Tuccio seizes the opportunity to stage a production of his own play, “Illuminata.” A realistic drama about a man who cheats on his wife with a beautiful young woman, but whose wife cannot tear herself away, “Illuminata” seems to reflect uncomfortably on Tuccio’s marriage to Rachel, who plays the wife opposite Tuccio’s loyal if airheaded friend Dominique (Rufus Sewell). Clearly lacking a convincing ending, “Illuminata” opens abysmally and is savaged by the vicious critic Bevalaqua (Christopher Walken), an outrageous blend of Oscar Wilde and Mario Lanza. The domineering Astergourd announces that “Illuminata” will be closed in favor of “A Doll’s House” — significantly, a play in which a wife leaves her husband — and the film’s complex sexual machinery is set in motion. Intoxicated with his own wounded self-importance, and insulted by Rachel’s insistence that they need to eat, Tuccio dismisses her, suggesting she tell Astergourd: “I, the great Rachel, lover to the mediocrity Tuccio, am here to eat. Give me Ibsen and some sausage.”

If the uncomfortable liaisons that flow from this are too numerous to mention, what’s most important is the marvelous fluency with which Turturro handles very difficult, finely nuanced tones. If Tuccio’s rendezvous with Celimene — who is, if possible, even more self-involved than he — is played for laughs, it nonetheless generates considerable erotic heat. Bevalaqua pursues the troupe’s clown, Marco (Bill Irwin), but even this overheated “macaroni queen” is redeemed from caricature in the end, for all Walken’s scenery chewing. When Rachel, Dominique and young Simone (Georgina Cates), Dominique’s lover, rehearse Tuccio’s play, the scene begins as a sparkling satire of actorly pretension: “You can’t cross left to right?” asks Rachel incredulously. “Not emotionally, no,” answers Simone. But within a few minutes, Rachel has wrenched the truth out of the younger woman — Simone really does love Tuccio, and dreams that he will leave Rachel for her — and we have left ersatz emotion behind for the real thing.

“Illuminata” is such a masterful accomplishment, from its astonishing ensemble cast to the lovely, unshowy cinematography of Harris Savides and the painstaking production design by Robin Standefer — that I hesitate to make the most obvious criticism. But Tuccio, as a protagonist, remains something of a cipher, a weak link in the lavish tapestry of “Illuminata.” He may redeem himself in Rachel’s eyes (it’s criminal, by the way, that an actress with Borowitz’s talent and willowy, grown-up beauty isn’t a star), but I was left feeling that he’s still an arrogant jerk, and an indifferent playwright, who doesn’t deserve her. We’re meant to understand that Tuccio saves himself and then Rachel saves his play, but for the first time in Cole and Turturro’s marvelous screenplay, the writing in the concluding scenes feels merely elegant, rather than convincing. This undercooked, passive role is a central, if not quite fatal, flaw in one of the most ambitious and arresting American films of recent years. Turturro is already one of our finest actors and, on this evidence, looks like a director of impressive range, prodigious human sympathy and unlimited potential. Perhaps doing both at once remains just beyond his grasp.

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Thursday, Jul 8, 1999 4:00 PM UTC

FilmAid

When some Hollywood producers tried to bring the cinema -- and a few celebrities -- to an Albanian refugee camp, they found their audience, though appreciative, had more pressing dramas to deal with.

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The clowns had no idea what they were in for. Twenty British circus performers with blue wigs, red noses and floppy shoes cavorted their way into Neprostina, a gravel-and-dirt refugee camp a few dozen miles inside Macedonia from the Kosovo border. They came to entertain the camp’s 8,000 ethnic Albanian inhabitants, more than half of whom were children. Taped calliope music filling the air, the clowns began a call-and-response routine with the crowd of thousands, chanting “Mu-si-ka, Mu-si-ka.” But in the din, what the refugees heard was “U-C-K, U-C-K,” the Albanian acronym for the quasi-victorious Kosovo Liberation Army. Singing and chanting, embracing their first emotional release after months of terrified and rageful repression, the refugees surged forward. Chaos turned into a near riot. The well-meaning but guileless clowns barely made it to safety. Soon after they flew home.

So at 8:30 on a Saturday night in June when a projector and 250-square-foot movie screen are erected by American technicians in a clearing in front of Neprostina’s hospital tent, no one knows what to expect. The sky threatens rain. Refugees, hearing rumors of something strange, stream from the narrow lanes between the rows of tents: silent women in head scarfs, young men in track suits, children by the hundreds. Outside the camp’s razor-wire fence, one truck is disgorging a dozen more exhausted Kosovars, while a second is loaded with the belongings of a family risking an early return despite mined schoolyards and booby-trapped homes. Packed front-to-back under the TV tent beside the clearing, 500 men stare with rapt attention at the 20-inch screen for the latest word of their country. Serb-sympathetic Russians at the airport in Pristina. Squads of KLA irregulars, teenagers mostly, baby-faced and deeply tanned, coming down from the hills. Mass graves. An elderly man with broken glasses puts his ear to the TV’s side and closes his eyes. The others are silent, their expressions stoic, except for the handful who openly weep.

The film projector fires its image, offering the Kosovars the quintessential American motion-picture experience: Charlie Chaplin waddling 20 feet high against the night sky, a drive-in theater from another era, another world. Most cinemas in Kosovo, except the one in its capital, Pristina, were boarded up five years ago, when the latest wave of troubles with the Serbs began. So for nearly all the children, this is their first full-sized movie ever; for most adults, their first in many years. Craning their necks, eyes wide with astonishment, the children cry out and applaud. Within minutes, though, most of the adults and older teenagers drift away, shrugging with disappointment and boredom. They can’t know — and, by their expressions, couldn’t have cared less — that this is the first time in the history of humanitarian relief that anything like this — refugee cinema — has been attempted.

“My uncle was killed four days ago going back home to check on the house and land,” says Hidagete Ismali, 20, as she stands at the camp’s gate with her father, Sadik, 67. Behind them, the Chaplin film has segued into a Yogi Bear cartoon, but she is too preoccupied to watch. Maybe it is nice for the children, she says, but as for herself, “I have nothing to eat, no place to sleep. I’m always thinking about over there. Are the relatives alive, does our house exist? What will we do when we go back to Kosovo where we have nothing?”

More Chaplin now, the carnival soundtrack competing with the drone of the newscaster from the nearby TV: columns of Serbs are fleeing Kosovo. Behind them, vengeful Albanians are looting and burning their homes. Kosovo’s two ancient cultural centers, Pec and Djacovica, have been laid to waste. My translator, a 19-year-old law student at the university in Pristina, turns from the movie screen to inform me that in his town an old Serb had protected his Albanian neighbor through the months of horror. When the Albanian’s son returned, he went to thank the neighbor for saving his father. Then he shot him in the head. The circle, he says, closes.

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The film equipment, the technical and administrative personnel and the movies themselves were flown here two days earlier by FilmAid, a consortium of Hollywood producers, directors, actors and studios who had mobilized their own brand of relief.

The first film was meant to have starred British actress Julia Ormond: “Legends of the Fall,” perhaps, co-starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins. Ormond already has a vested interest in the Balkans, having produced the powerfully raw documentary “Calling the Ghost,” about Muslim women raped by Serbs in Sarajevo. At one point she decided to come to the Macedonia camps herself, permitting the refugees to gaze at the real Julia as well as the celluloid one. By doing so she hoped to offer some level of star-powered edification, if not inspiration. After all, Richard Gere had already come; he spent six days in Stankovic I, the refugee camp of choice among diplomats and celebrities because of its proximity to Skopje’s hotels and restaurants. The press releases say he was a hit. Vanessa Redgrave came, too.

FilmAid was the brainchild of Caroline Baron, the New York producer of films like “Addicted to Love” and “Home for the Holidays.” Last fall, a New York Times photograph of an Albanian Kosovar slumped in the dirt, executed by Serbs before his family, raised her ire — and her conscience. By day she was shooting “Flawless,” a new movie with Robert De Niro. At night she went home to obsess on footage of mass graves and the refugee exodus out of Kosovo into the camps. History began to shout down at her.

“I was always angry as a kid studying the Holocaust, thinking how Americans did nothing to help the situation,” Baron, 37, tells me in New York, before her flight to Skopje. She describes a dinner party she attended in April at which she complained about her disgust over Kosovo. Her friend Hector Babanco, director of “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” leaned across the table and told her to shut up and do something. The next morning she awoke to a radio interview with the director of the International Rescue Committee’s Emergency Response Team, Gerald Martone, in which he said that one of the biggest problems in the refugee camps was boredom. Of the original 800,000 refugees scattered between Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro, nearly 500,000 remain, afraid to move. “They are not dying,” Martone says. “The tragedy they face is a very bleak, dreary existence, days with nothing to do but watch yet more buses being deposited into their camp. There’s no diversion from their own ruminations, flashbacks of what they had fled from.”

Baron recalls: “I thought, ‘I’m a movie producer, I can do something about that.’ I flashed to ‘Sullivan’s Travels,’ the Preston Sturges film about an impoverished church. Joel Macray plays a film director, and he says, ‘There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. That’s all some people have.’”

That night, Baron called De Niro and his partner at Tribeca Films, Jane Rosenthal. “The whole issue with Albania,” Rosenthal says, “having made ‘Wag the Dog,’ and the political issues of the last year, and then to top it off with this war, seemed a little too bizarre. Everybody involved in the movie gave a little sigh, and felt a little peculiar.” Baron had De Niro’s ear. Her second call was to Chris DeFaria, vice president of production at Warner Bros. She pitched him her idea: movies to refugees.

“I thought, what can I as a film producer, and the film industry specifically, do that isn’t just about raising money to send food and shelter, but what relief organizations aren’t thinking about or don’t have the ability to do? I thought I could bring them what we create, what we live for, what we love. What is so universal.”

But in the face of executions and mass rage, and sanitary airstrikes by invisible NATO planes, the idea of flying movies into refugee camps smacked of the Hollywood equivalent of lobbing “happy bombs,” yet another phone-it-in campaign by people lucky enough to live the glamorous life, far from here.

“Is this frivolous?” DeFaria, in Los Angeles, remembers wondering. “Is it presumptuous to think we can provide a bona fide distraction? Was this a horribly insensitive idea, or was this wonderfully small and imaginative?”

Baron conferred with the Bosnian ambassador to the United Nations and officials of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, who assured her that the refugees had plenty of blankets and food. What they need is normalization, to know the world is bigger than their camp. More than half the refugees are children, all of them haunted by memories of Serbs at their door, many traumatized by having witnessed massacres and mass burials in their villages. Temperatures are in the 90s and 100s. Martone recalls how in one camp, where there is a single, ramshackle TV propped in a tent, “hundreds are packed in there, thirsty to see images, even this cold, blue haze and static.”

That was all Baron needed to hear. Whether frivolous or inspired, she had a movement on her hands, and it needed a name. She and DeFaria decided on FilmAid, abiding by a tradition of celebrity causes that began with the music industry’s Live Aid in the mid-1980s, which raised money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

“We have never had any such offers for any other refugee crisis or emergency or refugee camp in the past,” says UNHCR spokesman Panos Moumtzis. “This is a first, though it’s not a solution. We don’t want the refugees to be saying that you are building cinemas and making us live here forever.”

The task was daunting: It would require equipment, transportation and technicians. “Movie producers are expert in logistics,” Baron says. “It’s what we do. It was important to be self-contained, to not drain any of the resources of the relief organizations.”

But FilmAid also needed films. Ironically, what seemed like such a simple idea at ground zero was a harder sell in Hollywood. Movie studios were skittish about participating. “There was hesitation on the part of some of them about being perceived as sending movies and not other kinds of relief, like food or shelter,” Baron explains. “Also, studios didn’t want to be perceived as selling a captive audience on their movies, forcing a group of refugees to watch their films as a marketing thing.”

Martone was irate: “That’s an aloof and luxurious position to be in,” he said of the studios. “Diversion is a luxury we afford ourselves without sacrifice. Why would we deprive it from refugees?” Aryeh Neier, president of the Soros Foundation, a FilmAid sponsor, called to offer a story about the positive results of a film festival in Sarajevo during the siege. “At the time a lot of people thought it was frivolous. Film people wanted to go: Daniel Day Lewis, Jeremy Irons. Writers like Susan Sontag. They weren’t allowed on the plane. UNHCR said it wasn’t humanitarian aid. But when people are in circumstances of this sort, it’s not only the flesh that needs to be taken care of, but the mind and the spirit as well. They want to be full human beings, entitled to things other human beings treat as their daily lives.”

When no studio wanted to be the first to step forward, officials from the United Nations, the Red Cross and the Soros Foundation scratched their heads. Finally, Miramax broke the logjam, donating not films, but money. The next day Universal and MGM offered movies, followed by Fox and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. FilmAid would soon be offering hastily dubbed versions of “Back to the Future,” “The Flintstones,” “Pinocchio,” “Lost in Space,” “Mask” and “ET.”

“Non-combative films,” Baron said, “hopeful, happy films.” But Spielberg’s donation was contingent on the stipulation that none of his movies would be shown first. And Disney, long synonymous with “hopeful” and “happy,” turned FilmAid down flat. When Baron called an executive at Universal Studios with an update on her progress, she was shocked by her reception. “I thought she’d be excited about this,” Baron recalls, “but she was ticked off.” Baron asked if Universal could donate more movies. The executive snapped, “I think we’ve already given you enough.”

Before FilmAid’s flight to Skopje, Julia Ormond wrestled with the notion of air-dropping celebrities into a real tragedy. Philanthropy is often self-reflexive, more an attempt to feed a desire to be involved, to have acted, than to fill a real need. “One instantly thinks one should send medicine or food,” Ormond muses. “But there is a great deal in film that is good, specifically related to children. On the other hand, I’m not sure people like to see actors or celebrities get involved in political issues. It’s deemed inappropriate. There’s the perception of seeking publicity. But if that’s the thing that’s going to stop you from doing something helpful, you have to get beyond it.”

Heading toward the refugee camp Cegrane, 21 miles southwest of Skopje, a pair of taxis carrying Caroline Baron, UNHCR public information officer Robin Groves and other FilmAid crew, passes an odorous tractor pulling a trailer piled high with human waste. The camp itself is a sprawling and fetid tent city of more than 40,000. A ramshackle downtown has sprung up inside the gates: a bumper-car ride, its façade adorned with portraits of Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond and Pamela Sue Anderson; a shopping area where refugees can buy shoes, clothes, fruit, ice cream and Jerry Springer T-shirts. There is a video game arcade and a well-stocked cafe boasting the “Best Hamburgers in Macedonia.” The espresso here is as good as you can find in any coffee bar in Seattle. The cafe’s proprietor energetically works the shaded tables, shaking the hands of Macedonian police and foreign visitors. He is neatly dressed. This war, this refugee crisis, has been good to him.

Surveying the scene, Groves is determined that the lessons of Bosnia be applied to Kosovo. “Justice was not done in Bosnia. It will be done in Kosovo. There’s a lot of regret about Bosnia, how long it took to intervene.” She has seen her share of crises: Cambodia, Iran, the Sudan. When Baron first called her about her FilmAid idea, Groves immediately thought it might be one way to make good on promises of support by the West. “The American film industry is regarded as fascinating and powerful. ‘Titanic’ had absolutely taken over Bosnia. People saw it many, many times. Cinema is a humanizing, equalizing experience, an intravenous connection to the rest of the world. This project offers classic cinema, timeless artifacts, movies people in our culture keep in their consciousness. Safe messages from the outside world.”

FilmAid is also, she thinks, the first step in an irreversible cultural transformation. “American soldiers will flood Kosovo. They will be there for years. Goods will arrive.”

Which is something that worried Susan Sarandon from the time of FilmAid’s inception. “Nobody makes the connection between the fact that we’re solving problems with violence and glorifying them and making them heroic, and expecting kids not to be attracted to that,” she says from New York. “It’s a mixed message, how and when we use violence.” The triangulation between Hollywood’s often-violent message and the unsurprising fact that the Balkans are known to be one of the world’s most violent movie cultures, creates a strange collision of motivations. “What was ‘Private Ryan’ about?” Sarandon asks. “That wasn’t any new message. Even the guy who doesn’t want to kill, in the end cold-bloodedly kills the guy who killed the troops. The way we solve our problems, what it means to be a man, and what is heroic, has not grown. Hollywood does nothing to improve it.”

In any case, Cegrane is not ready for the invasion. Tension there is high due to overcrowding and internal rivalries. The camp’s director is concerned about controlling the huge numbers of refugees once word gets around that movies are being shown. Also, fights among young men have been breaking out. At another camp, Stankovic I, troops have been quelling riots sparked by Albanian lynch mobs applying vigilante justice to Gypsies accused of participating in Serbian atrocities.

But in another corner of Stankovic I, young men gather in the shade of a tarpaulin, chatting hopefully about how the movies will further aid their already burgeoning camp love lives. Four young couples in camp have already met and decided to marry. But Florin Lila, 23, a handsome economics student, isn’t interested in marriage. In at least one way, refugee status has been good for him. Men and women are bored, he says with a grin, and know they’ll probably never meet again. Tents are made available. “I am for refugee life,” he says, then suggests that FilmAid show “Romeo and Juliet,” the Leonardo DiCaprio version. After all, he says, the story line couldn’t be more appropriate.

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Neprostina refugee camp, FilmAid’s premier, and Julia Ormond is not here. Back in Los Angeles, she claims a full schedule, though one FilmAid staff member says she was nervous about the trip. Sarandon thought about coming, too, then decided to tend to her family instead. Christian Slater was coming, then he wasn’t. Richard Gere is long gone. Judging by the incident with the clowns, it is probably just as well. To her credit, Caroline Baron is relieved. The line between purpose and spectacle, she knows, is narrow. Her goal is to entertain refugees, not coddle celebrities.

But FilmAid did give interested stars a chance to tape greetings and good wishes. The video will be shown as a kind of coming attraction. Drew Barrymore, Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond, Whoopi Goldberg, Robert De Niro — they say hello, they offer good wishes.

As the images first hit the screen, Baron, Groves and the others among the FilmAid crew are celebrating. They embrace each other, they smile. They have spent the last two months raising money, squeezing reluctant movie studios, trying to stay self-contained: They used their own equipment, their own transport and in-country technical support. This effort, they know, is being used as a template for future crises. Films on giant screens in the next Rwanda? The next Chechnya? They think so, and are justly pleased. They intend to follow the refugee exodus into Kosovo, moving from razed town to razed town like a traveling circus, offering, at best, momentary distraction for adults, eye candy for children.

In the darkness beyond the movie projector’s light-line, Nazmi Bajramag, 20, grins tolerantly in their direction. “I was jailed one month with 43 others,” he says, eager to testify. “The Serbs asked us if we were innocent men, then put guns in our mouths and pulled the trigger.” Usually, he says, the guns were not loaded. Once or twice they were.

Blerim Tasholli, 39, one of the nearly 50,000 refugees to return that day, steps up into a truck that will take him to the border. He glances over his shoulder at the movie, but only when he is asked about it, then shrugs. He apologizes; he hadn’t noticed. He is leaving the camp to see if his house still stands, and to find what, if anything, is left of his family.

“I want to see the Kosovo that is free. I want to feel that emotion. That moment comes once in a lifetime.”

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Peter Landesman is a journalist and novelist. His journalism has appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine. His second novel, "Blood Acre," was published in February by Viking. More Peter Landesman.

Tuesday, Mar 30, 1999 8:00 PM UTC

I can't get arrested in this town!

When Celebrity Arrest Syndrome goes international.

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“An ongoing New York protest against the police shooting of an unarmed street vendor got a dose of Hollywood support this week. Activist Susan Sarandon and 218 others were arrested Thursday …” — “Names & Faces,” Washington Post, March 27

Ronnie, hi, it’s — sorry honey, can you hold?

[Eight-minute pause.]

Hi, Ronnie, you’re a sweetheart, that was my homeopath, he’s impossible to actually get on the phone. So I called because the talk we had last week? About this is a transitional point in my career and we need to raise my profile and get me into quality projects? Well, I’m doing Pilates with the cable news on — it helps me clear my mind and get centered — and guess who I see? Susan Sarandon, on the television, prime time, getting arrested. Looking absolutely fucking drop-dead gorgeous, I could rip her throat out. Have you heard about this Amadou Diablo man in New York? Well, apparently the thing with this Diablo –

[Three-syllable pause.]

You see, Ronnie, this is exactly what I was talking about. The second-guessing and the corrections and the nit-picking. Do I have to remind you who could have jumped over to Ovitz when he came sniffing around? Fine, so this Di-OWL-o apparently had his rights violated by the New York police, really badly violated — yes, well, I’d call that “violated,” wouldn’t you?

[Brief, apologetic pause.]

My point is, they wrote Sarandon up like she’s Mother fucking Teresa. Blah blah blah chestnut-haired Oscar winner and activist. Blah blah blah commitment to social justice. Blah blah blah Tibet blah blah blah longtime actor-director companion. I don’t know what page it’s on. Laine found it on the Netscape and gave me the gist — you know what my homeopath said about having newsprint in the house.

My point is, we both know there’s room in this town for like three successful older actresses. After 40 I don’t care how much Stairmaster you do, how much surgery you have: You need stature. You need — Laine, what’s that word? — you need GRAVitas.

My point is, this Diablo thing is getting huge. Sarandon’s there this week, next week you bet it’ll be Alec Baldwin. After which Streisand, Tom and Nicole, pretty soon everybody’s jumping in and it’s over. We’ve got a narrow window. We need to get me arrested, Ronnie, and we need to get me arrested fast.

[Medium-length pause.]

[Long, icy responding pause.]

[Longer pause, with ample time for fumbling clarification.]

Oh and the Lifetime Original Movie was a good idea? “Torn Apart: A Surrogate Mother’s Story” with Gabrielle Carteris? Listen, Ronnie, I am not ready to disappear for 40 years until they flash me for five seconds in the Academy Awards death reel. I want my fucking halo now. I want to be the Stepmom. I want to be Sister Whatshername with Sean Penn. You want to continue representing me, you call Ed Sharpton’s agent, you call whoever you have to and you get my highly toned ass thrown in jail.

Ronnie, honey, it’s me. No, I’m at the Mercer — the planter of wheat grass in the room at W New York was like half-dead, I couldn’t deal with it. So are we all set with Sharpton’s people?

[Pause.]

They said what? I have to what?

[Pause.]

That isn’t going to work. Because it’s not, that’s why. Because I’m not standing on the asphalt in New York City in March, with the bird shit and rain and exhaust fumes and my multiple chemical sensitivity and God forbid I even breathed that to my homeopath, that’s why. Can’t the police just send somebody? Yes, yes, Ossie Davis, yes, Ruby Dee, I’m sorry but what else are they going to do all day? They make, what, one movie a decade?

[Pause.]

No, I can’t just issue a statement! Ronnie, a man basically died or whatever here. This is not just about getting me on television. This is about sending a message, which requires that I get on television, which if you think anyone’s sending cameras for a fucking press release you are seriously in the wrong line of work.

[Pause.]

Well, that’s your job. It’s national news, right? Aren’t they protesting in Los Angeles too?

[Really extremely brief pause.]

My God, what’s wrong with this country? Doesn’t anybody care about anything anymore?

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No, Ronnie, everything is not OK. It took the Mobile Arrest Unit hours to show up, if I don’t have a chronic-fatigue relapse it’ll be a miracle, and the coverage! Don’t I pay you to manage this? “Tinseltown Gadfly and Elderly Rev in Paddy Wagon Fracas”? Civil-rights legend, my ass — the man’s a bigger camera hog than Jenny McCarthy. Anyway, that’s not why I’m calling. The Diablo thing was all wrong for me. I need something of my own, and I think I’ve found it. Did you know we’re bombing a tiny country? Well, Laine’s still working on that, but I’m pretty sure it’s near Albania –

[Brief, witty remark.]

Yes, with Bobby De Niro and Anne Heche, I was thinking exactly the same thing! And Ronnie, this is going to be way bigger than Diablo. They’re protesting at the American embassies all over the world, and, well — I know you like me to consult you in advance, but I had Laine set up a meeting with one of their people.

[Brief, flustered protest.]

That’s exactly what I thought, but this gentleman gave me some of the most fascinating literature, and Ronnie, the stories are all lies. The spite! The conspiracy! Apparently entire villages of people have staged their own mass murders just to smear the Serbians. And of course the media — well, it’s just like what they did to that poor fat man in Atlanta. Ronnie, mistreatment by the press? Who better than me to understand! This could be like George Clooney after Princess Diana –

[Brief, cautious venture.]

People are different these days, Ronnie. Sure, they ripped Vanessa Redgrave over that Palestinian business, but look, she just won the Globe for “Gods and Monsters.”

[Brief, tactful remark.]

Whatever, well, nobody else knows that either, but they gave her the Globe anyway, that’s exactly my point. And, better, this is Europe, which can only help my international box office, I mean I’m sorry but I bet they don’t have three cineplexes in Tibet. Now. Does America have an embassy in Los Angeles?

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[Extended, shrill tone.]

Pick up, Ronnie. Ronnie, pick up. Fuck. Sorry about the connection, but apparently this country’s out of my cell area — it’s, like, out of all the cell areas. So since you obviously had issues with this project I had Laine go ahead and do the legwork, and, well, all the best demonstrations are in Eastern Europe. We’re in — Laine, honey, where are we? — I think it has some of those little dots in the name, you can have your assistant look it up. Meantime, look for me on CNN. I have to go, the organizers are passing out cocktails. I wish you could see — they have some type of little towel stuck in them. This is the most fascinating culture!

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Well, Mr. Skeptic, eat your words. It was amazing: the stone-throwing, the police dogs — it was just like “Born on the Fourth of July.” No, not a scratch! Laine had a bit of an allergic reaction to the gas at the embassy while he was securing my oxygen mask, but fortunately he had his epinephrine. Afterward? Well, I guess you could call it a “jail,” the literal translation is “dungeon,” but — no! Of course not! They sent me on to the Hilton. Evidently “Lethal Menace” just made their theaters, and, well, not to brag, but I’m something of an icon here. It’s not the St. Regis, but this isn’t a vacation, right?

[Hopeful interjection.]

No, not quite yet, that’s what I’m calling about. I need you to make a teensy call to the State Department. One of the gendarmes is complaining of a stiletto-heel puncture — of course it’s mistaken identity! You think they don’t have Manolo here?

[Brief reassurance.]

Great. Now I want a press conference as soon as my plane gets in. Laine’s faxing you a fact sheet on Mr. Milosevic for handouts, and he’s checking if we can borrow a couple of Serbian children — but just in case, put in a call to Tad at ICM. See if we can get a piece in Us — no, somewhere serious — let’s try George. And … and … excuse me …

[Hushed, concerned inquiry.]

No, Ronnie, I’m sorry, it’s just the opposite. I’ve never felt better. Things are about to turn around for me. Can you feel it? I just — I feel my work right now is coming from a very real place. Oh, Ronnie. It means nothing to have a gift unless you use it for something important. Isn’t that why we were put on this earth? Isn’t that what this business is all about?

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James Poniewozik is the editor of Salon Media. For more columns by Poniewozik, visit his column archive. More James Poniewozik.

Friday, Mar 6, 1998 8:00 PM UTC

“Twilight”

Charles Taylor reviews 'Twilight' Directed by Robert Benton. Starring Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, and Gene Hackman.

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In the midst of neo-noirs, postmodern noirs, sci-fi noirs, noirs where every genre trademark — from classic cars to femmes fatales — is presented as if it were a pristine exhibit at a museum of pop culture, the relaxed air of “Twilight” comes as a relief. Set in contemporary Los Angeles, it’s a noir, plain and simple, not a twist on the genre or a dissertation. Handsomely shot by Piotr Sobocinski, “Twilight” clocks in at a trim, pleasurable 90 minutes. Though the mystery doesn’t need nearly that long to unravel (every surprise is telegraphed), from moment to moment, the performances are all so good that it’s easy to overlook the plot’s flimsiness.

A collaboration between Benton and novelist Richard Russo (whose book “Nobody’s Fool” was the basis for Benton’s last movie), the screenplay uses a detective story as a pretext for a film about aging and death. That’s a sure way to invite the sentimentality that lurks beneath nearly every hard-boiled exterior; but when you’re watching Paul Newman and Susan Sarandon engage in fond old-acquaintance backchat, or Newman and James Garner talking about what became of former cohorts, you remember how satisfying that sentimentality can be when it’s held in check by an actor’s intelligence.

Newman plays Harry Ross, a retired private eye who’s become a permanent house guest at the home of two old friends, movie stars Jack and Catherine Ames (Gene Hackman and Sarandon). A few years earlier, when their daughter Mel (Reese Witherspoon) ran off to Mexico with a boyfriend, Harry tracked her down and brought her home. But he got himself accidentally shot in the process and went into a boozing tailspin. Sober now, he’s asked to do just enough so that everyone can pretend he’s not living on the Ameses’ charity. The plot hinges on a blackmail threat, the murder of a retired cop who may have been behind it and the never-solved disappearance of Catherine’s first husband. Really, though, it’s no more than an excuse for Benton to give his actors a series of extended scenes.

“Twilight” hums with the pleasure the actors take in their work. Time and again, they come up with gestures or line readings that seem to contain the entirety of their characters. For Witherspoon, who’s able to show the vulnerable side of a hard-edged kid without going soft, it’s the little heartbreaker of a moment after she’s made love with her boyfriend and asks him, “Do you love me? It’s OK if you don’t.” And later, when she asks Harry point blank if he’s in love with her mother and then assesses what awaits him with a pitiless “Poor you.” For Stockard Channing, as Harry’s old police partner, Verna, it’s the embrace she gives Harry when she comes upon him unexpectedly at a murder scene followed by the brusque instruction to an officer: “Cuff him.” For Liev Schreiber, as Mel’s former boyfriend, it’s the callowness that makes him a born patsy. For Garner’s old buddy Ray, it’s the suggestion of sneakiness beneath his usual relaxed ease. And for Margo Martindale, who, as one of the blackmailers, is in a great tradition of tough, wisecracking movie broads, it’s the rueful weight she puts on her final line, “I never learn.” It’s a moment of classic noir futility, as devastating as the question at the end of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing”: “What’s the use?”

The press material for “Twilight” says that “there is no such thing as a Gene Hackman role.” I’d never deny Hackman’s versatility, but as Jack Ames, who seems even more riddled with regrets than with the cancer that’s killing him, Hackman shows, as he has before, that he may be better than anyone at playing likable, weak men who know they’re weak and despise themselves for it. Hackman has a way here of making every biting comment, every bit of anger, sound like a self-reproach.

Sarandon has made no secret of trying to find roles that express something of her political and feminist convictions. So it seems strange to find her in a film noir, considering that women in the genre almost always function as betrayers or destroyers. In the adolescent fantasy of hard-boiled detective fiction, the uncorruptable man stands up to the corrupt world, only to find out that the woman he’s fallen for is part of that same rottenness. Sarandon opens up another possibility, one that brings the adolescent bent of the genre into the open. She plays Catherine as a woman who’s faced hard choices that few people could imagine, done what she had to do and now refuses to apologize. Most of her scenes with Newman play as sublime flirtation grounded in years of affection. She slips into their scenes as if she were slipping into a deliciously warm bath. There’s a lovely moment when he comes upon her skinny-dipping in the pool and turns away, even though, as she kiddingly reminds him, he’s seen her nude in the movies plenty of times. What’s amazing about the moment later on when Harry asks Catherine if she loves Jack enough to kill and she answers, “You bet,” is that there’s no diminished affection for Harry in her answer. She’s telling Harry, “That’s how it is, and if you’re not tough-minded enough to accept it, too bad.” Without a trace of preachiness, Sarandon turns one of the genre shibboleths on its head.

The role of Harry Ross doesn’t allow Newman the intensity and daring of the best scenes in “Absence of Malice,” “Fort Apache, the Bronx” or “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.” But in a movie whose subject is aging, the way Newman looks (still fabulous), and the casual grace and understated dignity in the way he handles himself, counts for everything. I’m not the first person to observe that, after years as a great movie star, Newman, upon reaching middle age, started showing the depth and range and gravity of a great actor. That he acquired those qualities without losing his star’s charisma meant he had become one of those rare performers who can give us the best of both worlds.

Everything Newman has gained as an actor becomes apparent when you contrast this performance with another one he gave as a detective in the bad, jokey 1966 movie “Harper.” The role showcased the cockiness that was the younger Newman’s trademark, but it had next to nothing to do with the character it was based on, Lew Archer, the hero of Ross MacDonald’s great series of detective novels. (“Harper” was based on MacDonald’s “The Moving Target.”) It’s hard not to think of those books, watching “Twilight.” They too were about California dreamers who find the identities and lives they’ve built for themselves threatened by a buried secret, a blood tie that can’t be broken. MacDonald’s detective stands for the type of human-scaled heroism that still seems possible after we accept the inevitable compromises of life. Archer, who understands that you pass judgment on others at the price of narrowing any understanding you’ve gained of them, works his cases hoping that his instinctive empathy won’t be pushed past its limits. Harry Ross is a weaker, more indecisive man, but Newman’s performance in “Twilight” echoes the decency and doubts, the almost gentlemanly approach of MacDonald’s hero. This modest entertainment, as much about the pleasures of acting as it is the refinements that come with age, offers an example of both: the sight of Newman at 73, getting closer than probably any actor ever will to putting Lew Archer on screen.

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Charles Taylor is a columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger. More Charles Taylor.

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