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SUSAN SARANDON INTERVIEWED BY GAVIN SMITH
a Film Comment online exclusive
What insight did you bring to the character you played in Bull Durham?
She was just a big fish in a small pond, and she had figured out her world and had it pretty much under control. The only problem was that she never really found partners qualified to give her as much of a run for her money as she gave them - and that was her way of maintaining control. She gives that up to play the game with somebody on her own level.
In what area are you most like her?
[Chuckles.] We share a sense of humor. And I guess whatever her sexuality is, it must be based in part on something in me. One reason I got the part was that they couldn't find somebody who could speak all those words and still be believable in terms of the sex - and I can't say that I handcuffed a lot of people and read Walt Whitman to them....
Is it that she has a sense of humor about her sexuality?
Yeah. We wanted to make sure that Kevin [Costner] and I were people who you would believe would also be good friends, having a good laugh - and then a fuck on the kitchen table. Which is different from it just being all very romantic.
What validity for you was there in the Costner character's point that you sleep with these rookies because you're afraid of a real man?
Yeah, sure, I think that that's true. Of course, you know, just because a guy's older doesn't mean he's a real man either [laughs]· so I don't know if it was an age thing, but she definitely played the muse, and she keeps Crash's dream alive, too. I played that scene at the end clearly that I was never afraid he was going to leave me - because she was used to being left; the thing that would have broken her heart was him giving up baseball, and that's what she didn't want to hear him say when he comes back on the porch. She's terrified he's going to say it's over and he's going to settle down and be nothing.
The richest scene in dramatic terms is the one where you come to confront Costner while he's doing the ironing. It contains an interesting and offbeat series of revealing moments.
That was one of the last scenes we did, and it was a scene we improvised and then wrote to answer and deal with a lot of things that hadn't been dealt with. The scene that existed never worked. Originally she loses her accent and you realize all along that she's not really from the South [laughs]. I said, "Ron, you can't do that, three-quarters of the way through the film, it's not about me, you don't have the time to salvage me then and it means everything I've done has been phony."
What was the process for fixing that scene?
The three of us got together and talked about what was in there. Kevin said, "Let's answer some of the questions," because Kevin's really smart in terms of filmmaking. He said, "What would be some of the things they're gonna say? Let's beat them to the punch and deal with some of this stuff. Why does she dress that way? Does she have a job? Where does she come from? Who is this person?" He started asking those questions. So we improvised a little bit and then Ron went back and wrote it, and then we looked at it, and then he wrote it a little bit more. The scene after that was this long scene, just the two of us in an empty bar where she tells her life story and they seem so intimate that they had to cut it - because they hadn't fucked yet [laughs]. It took the place of a bed scene.
Atlantic City was an important film in your career. How did you see your character in that?
Well, that's funny because Louis [Malle] and I were together at that time and I had agreed to do that project with him before there was a role, really. A very bad script came to him, and they had the money but they had to spend it by a certain date. I had introduced John [Guare] and Louis, and it was kind of being written as we went along. The tough thing was making sure that her dream was compelling enough: to deal in Monaco is not exactly earth-shattering, and I had to find some way to raise those stakes so that became important; and her journey away from her stupid husband. I had to believe she was somebody who didn't have the options. She wants to know, she wants something outside her experience, and she sees it as her ticket to get out. Monaco embodies for her everything exotic. And I think part of what appealed to Burt was the aspect that he educates her. He was kind of like that, Burt, with me anyway - he always wanted to order you this or have you try that or see this; he kind of played that figure.
Did you play her as genuinely attracted to him or manipulating him?
Oh no, I don't think she was that in control to be manipulative in that sense. She's always taking care of her husband and her stupid younger sister, and here's a guy who's gonna teach her something, take care of her. When she gives herself to him she's just mesmerized by what he's saying, that voyeuristic thing. You don't ever see him touch me, and Burt couldn't understand how that would work. He thought that in some way it made him really passive, and we had a big long talk about it before he would do it - and then he did it so brilliantly. The Fifties idea of sex scenes and men and women, he should have just taken me and taken my clothes off and thrown me down, and it was always written as her being mesmerized. Like an animal in the headlights was the way I described it.
It was my job to discuss it with Burt. Louis wasn't really somebody who talks to actors. On Pretty Baby I had to take care of Brooke [Shields, as her daughter]. He'll do it in the editing, but he doesn't do it while you're working. John Guare's too tactful, so I had to discuss this with Burt. He said, "Nobody's gonna respect me for sitting there talking to her"; he really thought he had to grab her. He was also, I'm sure, so vulnerable because he was being asked to play old for the first time and stick his belly out and whiten his hair. It's one thing to agree to that, but then to actually do it. It's like when I gained all the weight for White Palace, 20 pounds - one thing to agree to it, and then suddenly you have to take your clothes off and you say, "What was I thinking? [Laughs] Am I really gonna do this?"
So working with Burt Lancaster was good?
He was very vulnerable. He was kind of stuck in a certain period where women are concerned, but he was so generous with me. I found him a very dear man, and if you look at his career he took extraordinary chances with some of his parts. It was quite amazing of him to do Atlantic City at that point of time. I did talk to him every now and then. I'd see something that he did, I'd call him. I called him when I saw Local Hero, I said, "You were so great," blah blah blah, and I hung up and he called me back and said, "You know, I was so shocked by you calling me that I didn't even ask you how you were?" I said, "I'm fine." He said, "After a while people just don't tell you anymore that you're good in things." I'm so glad that I called. People just take those guys for granted, in a way.
How did being in a relationship with Louis Malle affect your work?
Oh, it's horrible. You can't walk out. They're always the most insulting to the person they know is going to be the most tolerant, so you're in a kind of hostage situation. Normally you wouldn't take any shit.
What other directors would you single out as actors' directors?
Jonathan Demme. I'm sure it's the same talent that makes him a wonderful parent. He just makes you feel that everything that you could contribute is just so welcome and so appreciated and so smart. So of course in that environment you're very free, you find yourself inspired. And he gives you a very secure structure within which to explore things, so it's not like everything's all over the place and chaotic; he's very analytical. I think that that's important, you can't feel as though everything's up for grabs.
Ron Shelton works from the people out. Someone like George works from the outside in. He doesn't even know how to talk - he comes to you and says, "It's just not - you know, with your face - you're kind of rolling your eyes -" You say, "George, don't tell me I'm rolling my eyes." And he says, "Well I mean - it, it's just that - never mind.·" So you say, "What, what?" and then finally you say, "Don't tell me anything!" [laughs]. And then he'll come back and say, "You know, I didn't think the scene was working, but I just saw the dailies and it worked." You think, Well, if you didn't think it was working why didn't you say something? He told me later, "I saw the first cut of Lorenzo's Oil and you're fine in it. I thought that Nick had completely stolen the film, but you're fine in it." And I thought, Now he tells me? What if I was really in trouble - he wasn't going to say anything to me? It's just not where he is. Louis too. If you can cast really well and know how to tell a story and you hire actors who can take care of themselves, for the most part....
That's three-quarters of it.
Yeah!
Have you ever been in situations where a director did something to provoke or stimulate something in you?
Yeah, and I don't appreciate it at all. Way at the beginning of my career, I went to an audition and I was reading with the director, who since has become an acting teacher. And he hit me. He slapped me. That doesn't work for me. Another director, one time, gave me an onion to cut. Now if he'd just said to me, "You should be getting upset in this scene" - he approached me on the dumbest level. I love it when actors do something unexpected, little things here and there. I've done things off-camera where I've done something different to make somebody laugh. All through Pretty Baby I had to talk to Brooke in a little cat voice, and that always made her laugh and lighten up. All my takes off-camera were talking with her like that. Sometimes just changing dialogue a little bit to try to help somebody. Maybe if you're supposed to be really nasty to somebody, you'd maybe be more mean than you would have. Or say something a little bit more personally, that you couldn't get away with on a two-shot.
What drew you to Pretty Baby?
Just the whole period and the place. Those were the days when I'd do a movie so I could go somewhere. Now I try to not go anywhere. He was a really interesting director and here was a woman who was more a child than her child. I added a line, saying to her daughter, "Do I look all right?" and truly Brooke had been - I mean, you can't get any closer to a whore than someone who's been making commercials since the time they were like eight months old. She was definitely without a childhood at that point. What's interesting about the film is that the person who by our system of morality should have been the victim is actually more together than most of adults. That's what made the film so disturbing to people - that this child was much more of a survivor than anybody else.
I wasn't sure your character really had any feeling for her daughter, though. I expected to see at least a moment of doubt in her during the auction of her daughter.
But she went through the exact same thing, and it was how she came about her life. It was a house, it was a family, these women all lived together and they had someone who took care of them. It wasn't as if she fell from grace, she was probably born into the whorehouse just the way her daughter was, so she came about not knowing anything different and she was fine and probably thought it was quite beautiful the way they were bringing her out on a tray, it was like a coming-out.
You didn't have children then. Could you do it better now?
No, I think I was at an advantage because I don't think she was like a mother, she was like a sister. That child was raised by everybody. I actually did spend a lot of time with Brooke, and I'm the oldest of nine kids, so it wasn't as if I hadn't been around taking care of children.
Where do you think the need to act springs from in you?
It comes more from overcoming this inertia and asking questions. If I hadn't become an actor I would have become a psychologist or something.
It doesn't sound as if you're creatively driven or compulsive.
No, I don't think I am. I think it's been a means to an end but not an end in itself, even before I had a family. It's not something I dreamt about becoming and then dedicated myself to and struggled for. It happened very quickly, and I thought it was a lark for at least ten or 15 years. I wouldn't even call myself an actress for a long time because it seemed so silly. And then I became somewhat disillusioned with it because, as a woman, you're not necessarily treated very respectfully in the industry. And then
Bull Durham changed that, and gave me faith in myself again. My disillusion had to do with working with mediocre people who had mediocre dreams, who didn't particularly feel passionately about what they were doing. I always took parts for some reason that spoke to me, but I may have been trying to make something that was more than what actually existed.
Well, you aren't referring to Pretty Baby or Atlantic City or even something like Tempest-
Tempest was a frustrating experience, although I like the movie and I like everybody that was involved in it. My perspective and the director's perspective were definitely very different. He [Paul Mazursky] was very limited by his own experience in how he saw women. I actually cut off all my hair hoping to get fired, and when that didn't work I was going to leave the film, and John Cassavetes begged me to stay. It was a very interesting acting exercise, to be there and to be playing a part where you believe you love the guy and the director tells you you don't love each other-and to choose to play everything completely against the way you've been directed, which was basically what was going on on that shoot. Also Gena [Rowlands] was fabulous, she couldn't play anybody petty, and we were set up in a situation that was such a cliché. She was so generous to me that it completely defused all that, made the guys seem like they were the ones who were petty.
There's a great scene where the two of you exchange compliments in the nightclub that seems a case in point.
She just took that scene, which was written to be very bitchy, and we just played it completely against the way that it was intended.
I had the feeling in Tempest you worked less for a characterization and more for a simple use of certain personal qualities that I associate with you, based on looking at a lot of your films - practicality, emotional availability, openness, honesty.... Did you feel your work here was very close to who you are?
I felt very inhibited by the perimeters within which I had to function. I felt that she was written as such a whiner, she's constantly asking to get laid, and what I said to Paul was that this character in Shakespeare's play - if you're the mistress of a high priest, certainly there's something more than wanting to get laid happening; you must in some way embrace his vision. The fact that you're with someone who's going into uncharted waters is important. My character was originally written with long hair tripping around on the rocks in high heels, and I kept saying, "A young woman who's been on the road, she's smarter than that, she's not wearing high heels." And that's when I came in with my boots and my hair cut off, thinking that he would freak and that would be the end of it. He did freak, but that wasn't the end of it.
What role is the furthest from who you are?
Lorenzo's Oil, absolutely. Her whole physicality, the way she speaks, the fact that she's so contained.
So that was a difficult aspect for you.
Yeah.
Did you base that aspect directly on her?
Yeah. That is the only thing that you are concerned with, of course - if you borrow someone's terror. They gave us so much, hours and hours of tapes....
Did you see Lorenzo?
Yes. They wanted so much for it to be a dignified, true presentation that they talked very intimately about everything. So the positive thing of that is that you have a lot to work with, and the negative aspect is that you have this burden because you want to treat these people with respect and you want them to be pleased with the emphasis that you've given this story. She was very pleased so.... I don't care what David Denby thinks.
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© 2003 by The Film Society of Lincoln Center
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