Town & Country

DATE April 27, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Director Joel Schumacher discusses his new
film "Tigerland"
NEAL CONAN, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Neal Conan sitting in for Terry.

While directing the movie "Batman Forever," Joel Schumacher learned that
blockbuster budgets can create big headaches that have more to do with
merchandising than filmmaking. Schumacher started small. He was the costume
director for the Woody Allen movies "Sleeper" and "Interiors." Then he went
on to write the low-budget, hit comedy "Car Wash." That lead to bigger
budgets. Schumacher directed "St. Elmo's Fire," "The Lost Boys" and the
John Grisham adaptations, "The Client" and "A Time To Kill." Then he directed
Michael Douglas in "Falling Down," Nicolas Cage in "8MM." He returned to low
budget filmmaking for his latest movie "Tigerland" which has just come out on
video and DVD. It's set in 1971 at boot camp in Ft. Polk, Louisiana. Terry
Gross spoke with Joel Schumacher after the film came out and she asked him if
he was every in the Army.

Mr. JOEL SCHUMACHER (Director, "Tigerland"): No. I was born in 1939, so I
was too young, of course, for Korea and getting a little old when Vietnam came
around. But I also, by then, was shooting drugs about six times a day, so
they took one look at me and were very happy for me to leave. I was a
casualty of the '60s but on the stateside.

GROSS: Did they turn you away?

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Yeah. They--I mean, I was such a drug addict that it was
clear that I was not Army material. I mean, I was a shooting-in-the-vein type
drug addict.

GROSS: Heroin?

Mr. SCHUMACHER: No, speed. Liquid methedrine.

GROSS: And you had track marks and they saw it.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Mm-hmm. Well, and also, my mind and body had not been
connected for a long time. I mean, I was--if you saw me on the street, you
would have gone (making disapproving sounds). Lucky to be here.

GROSS: This is kind of like the upside of being a drug user in a way. I
mean, a lot of people who didn't want to go to Vietnam mutilated their bodies
or tried to have, you know, public nervous breakdowns in order to get out of
the war.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Or said they were gay. Some people--some heterosexual men
tried to say they were gay, thinking that would make them 4-F. And I guess it
worked for a while until the Army caught onto that. So, yeah, remember this
is 1971, and by now we had definitely been, you know, at the war too long.
And the entire country was in a state of, you know, tumultuous confusion and
violence over it, and so were families and people in neighborhoods. And so
people were not clear really about where--why they were going or where they
were going and a lot of people didn't want to go and found different ways to
get out of it. And as you mentioned, we even have a scene in the film which
is taken from a friend of mine's experience where Colin Farrell and Matthew
Davis, who play the leads, think perhaps they'll get drunk and break their
legs and then they won't have to go.

GROSS: But they can't go through with it.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: No. It's very hard to break your limbs. Well, because the
friend of mine, Branchole(ph), who's now a successful CIA agent, was a hero in
the Gulf War. But before he left for the Gulf, not expecting to be a hero, he
and his best friend in the Marines decide to get drunk and they would break
their legs. And he said it's very difficult to actually break your limbs.

GROSS: Well, the cast in "Tigerland" is really mostly unknown actors. Are
there advantages, do you think, to working with actors who aren't stars and
who aren't even known?

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Yes. I've had a lot of experience with that because in a lot
of my earlier films, "St. Elmo's Fire" and "Lost Boys" and "Flatliners" and
even in "The Client" and "A Time To Kill," I used unknowns in the lead,
Matthew McConaughey in "A Time To Kill" and Brad Renfro, the 10-year-old boy
who did such a great job in "The Client." And I've always enjoyed working
with young people who are unknown because it's a very exciting time in their
lives. They haven't learned a lot of bad habits yet. Their whole careers are
ahead of them. There's been no chance for any kind of cynicism or to look at
the job as a gig in any way. And there is something very unique about working
with people in their first job or their second job or their largest part
they've ever had that's very exciting, very inspiring. I can't say enough
about this cast because they worked under horrendous conditions and did it
with a smile on their face and were very good sports.

GROSS: Joel Schumacher is my guest, and his new film, the new film he
directed, is called "Tigerland" and it's set a boot camp in Louisiana in 1971.
Some of his other films that he directed include "St. Elmo's Fire," "The Lost
Boys," "The Client," "A Time to Kill," "Batman Forever," and "Falling Down."

What are some of the unique pressures when you're making a blockbuster,
particularly a summer blockbuster like a "Batman" movie and you have this
really large budget that you are responsible for.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Yes, those are the only two large-budget films I've ever
made: "Batman Forever" and "Batman & Robin." The budget is a small pressure
compared to the tremendous burden of carrying one of the corporation's largest
assets on your shoulder because when I was first offered the "Batman"
franchise, Bob Daly said, `We'd like to offer you the corporation's largest
asset.' And I thought he was joking. I thought it was sort of a charming way
to get into offering me a movie, and I said jokingly, `Well, you're going to
give me Mel Gibson and, you know, that's great. I'll set him up as a
gynecologist in Beverly Hills, and we'll make so much money we can buy Time
Warner.'

But they weren't kidding at all, 'cause what I soon found out--and I just told
this to a young director who would like to be considered for the next "Batman"
movie, and he asked me what my advice was and I said, `Listen, I think you're
a brilliant, young director and I think you'll do a great job, but making the
movie is not the job. The job will be feeding, you know, the kitty. And the
kitty is a very bit kitty. You're supporting Warner Bros. stores, all of the
licensees, all of the ancillary rights. Wal-Mart, Kmart, the fast-food
franchises, Kenner Toys, Sega games, Acclaim. There are thousands and
thousands of items that are made with the Batman logo on them. DC Comics
you're helping to support, and you're feeding that enormous machine. And that
is really what the job is, and everyone has very, very, very high
expectations.'

After "Batman Forever" was the most profitable and successful film of that
year--I believe it was '95, yeah--then two years later we were expected to top
it. And that was what when things began to burn out for me because by then I
realized that I was really opening toy stores in Sydney, Australia. I was not
making movies anymore. I was the doll king. I might as well be on QVC. And
it wasn't a bad experience, but it was a very enlightening one, and I needed
to move on.

GROSS: How does the anxiety of all the people who are going to be selling the
ancillary products, how does their anxiety get communicated to you, the
director?

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Well, on "Batman Forever," because everyone felt that
"Batman Returns" had been a disappointment--that was Tim Burton's second foray
into it. And nobody bought the merchandise and it was considered a failure.
So they wanted to reinvent the franchise and so people were very wary and
skeptical of us. So in the first "Batman," we were kind of begging people to
take a chance on us.

What happened was the movie became such a surprising hit and everyone made so
much money that when "Batman & Robin" came along, then they expected to make a
great deal of money. So the way that works is they come and see you. You
have board meetings. They tell you--there's a word that I learned called
toyettic(ph). They want to know if the movie is toyettic enough. That means:
Are you going to sell enough toys with the movie? Are you going to have
enough vehicles, enough trucks, enough this?

You know, when Wal-Mart comes to purchase, they buy things in the hundreds of
thousands of dozens. I had never heard of numbers like that, you know? And
that means one item like Batman pajamas. So they're looking to the movie
really as a starting point for sales. And they have concerns about the
children's market, you know, `Will the film be too dark? Will it be too
adult? Will it be too sexual? Will it be too violent? You know, can you
sell a Happy Meal if the film is not happy?'

You know, you're in the advertising business and it was fun in the sense that
I learned a great deal. It stopped being fun after a while. And then there
are people who want to get in. Can you put in, you know, a Visa card? You
know, can Batman carry a Visa card? And then they'll offer a lot of money.
So suddenly, you know, a lot of the top executives at the studio are saying,
`Joel, can't you find a scene that you can put in a Visa card, you know?' You
know, the cart is definitely starting to run the horse.

GROSS: So tell me more about how product placement works in movies.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Well, it's become less and less because the audience has
gotten really hip...

GROSS: Too hip to it, yeah.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: ...to it. And also there are a lot of stars that are too
hip to it. And so in other words, you know, if Julia Roberts is going to be
sitting at a bar drinking a named beer, why aren't they paying her? You know,
why should she advertise a beer just because they're going to throw some money
at the studio?

GROSS: Right.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: They're actually using her image then to promote something
that maybe in real life she is not a fan of, you know, or doesn't want to be
seen promoting.

CONAN: More with movie director Joel Schumacher after a short break. This is
FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

CONAN: Now we continue Terry Gross' conversation with movie director Joel
Schumacher.

GROSS: I want to ask you about some other recent news that you created, which
is that you came out, it was, I think, sometime in the past year, yes?

Mr. SCHUMACHER: No, I've never been in.

GROSS: Never been in. OK.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Never been in.

GROSS: But it became more public?

Mr. SCHUMACHER: No, I think...

GROSS: Someone told me, is that what it was?

Mr. SCHUMACHER: I don't know. I mean, I've been--you know, I've been--my
life's sort of been an open book since birth. I--you know, I'm one of those
street kids who started drinking at nine, drugs in my early teens, sex when I
was 11, you know, smoking when I was 10. I'm one of those people. And
certainly have had a very sexual life, which we probably won't go into 'cause
we don't have enough tape, but I've never hidden anything about my life and
always assumed everybody knew everything about me since I certainly, you know,
done everything on the planet Earth except murder somebody. And, I hope, in
my drug haze I didn't, but I'm a man. I'm a citizen of the United States, and
happy to be. And I'm a movie director. And what I do in the bedroom, I would
assume is of absolutely no interest to anybody on the planet Earth.

GROSS: Now all that said, did people in the industry know, and was it ever
held against you in anyway? Do you ever feel that...

Mr. SCHUMACHER: If anything has ever been held against me, I'm not aware of
it. In other words, I do think--sometimes I'm asked if there's homophobia in
Hollywood. Well, there's homophobia on the planet Earth as there is
anti-Semitism and sexism and racism, unfortunately. And I don't think
there will be an end to those things in our lifetime. They don't get checked
at the gate at the movie studio. People who work in the movie business have
the same feelings as people do all over the globe. The difference in show
business is, if you can make money for people, they don't care what you do.
They don't care if you screw yaks in the middle of the street. They'll even
buy you the yak. They'll give you their yak. So if I've ever been denied
access anywhere in the world because of, you know, who I am in any way, I'm
not aware of it.

GROSS: Now it sounds like everything you've been saying that you were doing
drugs, having sex and involved in all kinds of mayhem before I was allowed to
even take the bus or the train by myself, so how did you end up with this, you
know, lively and kind of dangerous life at such a young age?

Mr. SCHUMACHER: My father died when I was four. My mother was out at work
six days a week, and three nights a week to support us. It was just my mother
and me. And I grew up in a relatively poor neighborhood in Long Island City,
right over the 59th Street bridge, which was basically factories and
tenementlike buildings. And I was on the street. You know, by the time I was
seven I had a bicycle, and so I was wild in the streets and I had no parental
supervision. Some of the women in the neighborhood who hung out of the
windows on their pillows--you know, their elbows resting on their pillows
would try to discipline me. They found that to be a futile attempt. And I
was just a kid in the streets. And that's not unusual. If you were to go
into a rough and, you know, unprivileged neighborhood right now anywhere, you
would find street kids that start everything very young. It's the way you
prove yourself to be a man in an environment like that. The sooner you start
drinking, smoking and having sex, the sooner you become a man. And I'm sure
it's that way today in many cultures.

GROSS: Were you still going to school while you were doing this?

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Oh, sure. I graduated from high school a little early
because I was a problem in school, so they skipped me a couple of grades
because in those days they thought if they gave you harder work to do, you
would behave. That was a mistake. That was just encouragement for me.

GROSS: Now you took a kind of interesting route to get to Hollywood. I
don't know if you ever intended to get Hollywood.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Never expected to get there.

GROSS: Yeah. But...

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Never knew I was going to get there.

GROSS: You started off, I think, like dressing windows for department stores.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Yes.

GROSS: Did--yeah.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Well, I started out working for the butcher when I was nine.
I started delivering meat. And then my mother worked in a dress store selling
dresses, and there was a bookstore next door run by what was called then a
beatnik. Her name was Irene. And she wore black stockings and, you know,
liked jazz. And she was an intellectual and an egghead, and her windows were
a mess, and so she let me pile books up in the window at nine, and once a
month I could pick a book, and that was my payment. So I sort of started
working doing windows, and never expecting to get to Hollywood. I grew up
behind a movie theater before television, which is probably another thing you
can't imagine. And...

GROSS: Well, there was a movie theater right across the way from your house.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Right across the way. I could see the door--the back doors,
the fire doors of the theater from the little apartment my mother and I lived
in. It was right across the street facing the empty lot where my baseball
team ...(unintelligible) we played baseball. So I was either causing mayhem
or in the movies causing mayhem. And I loved the movies. I was like the
little kid in "Cinema Paradiso" that my mother had to drag me out of there. I
would watch the same movies over and over and over again. And I was always
obsessed with them.

Hollywood was a long way away in those days, and I had to make money because I
had a Jack and the Beanstalk kind of life. You know, I had to sell the cow to
get some money for my mother and me. So I had to go out and work at a very
early age, which was my pleasure to do, sort of. And I had gotten myself
through art school and won a lot of awards and had worked my way up to doing
the windows in the interiors of Bendal's(ph), which was a very important store
in New York at that time. I worked for a great boss, Jerry Stutson(ph).

You know, I also wanted the beautiful people life. When I was a kid, I would,
you know, look at magazines and newspapers, see people dressed up going to
parties, and I wanted to be those people 'cause I thought people who got
dressed up and went to parties were happy people. I have since changed my
mind about that. And so I wanted the beautiful people life, and I got it. I
got it really young and all the consequences that come with the fast lane.

GROSS: Now a movie that really helped make your career was "Car Wash." You
wrote the script. It became a huge hit even though it was a fairly low-budget
film. Had a great cast. I mean, the cast included Richard Pryor, Garrett
Morris, Antonio Fargas, George Carlin, Ivan Dixon, who was in "Nothing But A
Man," Professor Irwin Corey, The Pointer Sisters. How--you know, one of the
things that's interesting about this is that it's a predominantly
African-American cast. You're, you know, a white person writing it for them.
That was probably--and I don't think it was very common to have movies then
with such a large African-American cast. I think there were far fewer movies
with predominantly black casts then.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Yeah.

GROSS: So tell me a little how the story came to you, or...

Mr. SCHUMACHER: Right. Well, the first script I wrote was "Sparkle," which
is also about three African-American sisters in Harlem--it was sort of a
forerunner to "Dream Girls." And I'd always been in love with rhythm and
blues and with the early days of soul music, and so the first script I wrote
was about that. And when people read it in Hollywood, they said, `Oh, Joel,
you've written a black movie,' and I had never heard that--speaking of
labeling, Terry.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. SCHUMACHER: I never heard that. I said, `Oh, so "Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid" is a white movie, but we don't refer to it as that.' And so
people are afraid of black movies. "Sparkle" got made for very little budget,
and it's still a cult hit, I'm happy to say. But then when I wrote "Car
Wash," that is called a crossover movie. And that means a movie with black
people in it that white people go to see. So I wrote a crossover movie.
I--the actual--the idea for "Car Wash" came from Art Linson and Gary
Stromberg, two strung-out record company execs at the time who wanted to do a
stage play where they built a car wash and had a big singing and dancing
musical in the car wash. And Ned Tannen, who ran Universal, said, `That's the
worst idea I've ever heard in my life, but maybe there's a movie in a car
wash, and maybe you could get Joel Schumacher, who's just written this movie
"Sparkle," to write it.'

And when they asked me to do it, I had just driven downtown LA one Sunday
morning to meet friends for breakfast, and I passed a car wash that was
closed. And there was an African-American hooker, street hooker, early in the
morning with a blonde wig on in a phone booth trying to make a phone call,
very strung out with a beer in a paper bag. And when they said, `Do you want
to write a movie about a car wash,' I said yes based on that image. And the
director, Michael Schultz's wife, Lauren Jones, played that hooker in the
movie. And the rest, as they say, Terry, is history.

CONAN: Movie director Joel Schumacher speaking with Terry Gross.
Schumacher's film "Tigerland" is just out on video. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of "Car Wash")

Unidentified Woman: Ooh, ooh, you might not ever get rich, but let me tell
ya, it's better than diggin' a ditch. There ain't no tellin' who you might
meet, a movie star or maybe even a--maybe a Jeep.

Unidentified Woman and Chorus: Working at the car wash. Working at the car
wash, yeah.

Unidentified Woman: Come on and sing it with me.

Unidentified Woman and Chorus: Car wash.

Unidentified Woman: Get with the feelin' now.

Unidentified Woman and Chorus: Car wash, yeah.

Unidentified Woman: Whoo! Come summer the work gets kinda hot. This ain't
no place to be if you planned on bein' a star. Let me tell you, it's always
cool. And the boss don't mind sometimes if ya act a fool at the...

Unidentified Woman and Chorus: Car wash.

Unidentified Woman: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Talkin' about the...

Unidentified Woman and Chorus: Car wash, yeah.

Unidentified Woman: Come on y'all and sing it for me.

(Credits)

GROSS: This is NPR, National Public Radio.

(Soundbite of music)

CONAN: Coming up, tips on bad acting. We'll hear from Greg Kinnear. He
played a soap opera star in the film "Nurse Betty" which is now out on video.
He's currently starring in the film "Someone Like You." Also Ken Tucker
reviews the final album by the late Kirsty Maccoll and Henry Sheehan
reviews the new comedy "Town & Country."

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Kirsty Maccoll's "Tropical Brainstorm"
NEAL CONAN, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Neal Conan in for Terry Gross.

The late British singer/songwriter Kirsty Maccoll emerged in the late 1970s as
a pop punk performer. She also wrote a hit that became a hit for Tracey
Ullman in this country called "They Don't Know." The daughter of folksinger
Ewan Maccoll, she became interested in Latin rhythms toward the end of her
life. Her last album "Tropical Brainstorm" has just been released. Rock
critic Ken Tucker has a review.

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. KIRSTY MACCOLL: (Singing) I once met a man with a sense of adventure. He
was dressed to thrill wherever he went. He said, `Let's make love on a
mountaintop under the stars on a big, hard rock.' I said, `In these shoes?'

KEN TUCKER reporting:

Listening to the witty tunes that fill "Tropical Brainstorm," it's
heartbreaking to think that Kirsty Maccoll is no longer with us. Shortly
after finishing this album, the 41-year-old singer was struck and killed by a
speedboat while swimming off the coast of Mexico. As a result, "Tropical
Brainstorm" stands as her final statement, the irony being that it's the most
atypical collection of songs she ever wrote.

Ms. MACCOLL: (Singing) I'm stalking a fan. He lives in a high-rise block and
here I am. He shouldn't have turned my rock. He's brushing his teeth. He
doesn't look back from this car. I'm hailing a cab, and I'm going to follow
his car wherever he goes. I won't be too far behind, standing around, driving
him out of his mind. Treachery made a monster out of me. Treachery...

TUCKER: The melodies on this CD are influenced by the travels Maccoll had
recently made to Cuba and Brazil. The lyrics, however, are vintage Maccoll,
full of cleverly worded yet scathing observations on the way men so often
mistreat women. Certainly a song like this one, called "England 2 Colombia
0," captures the ways of a lying cad as pitilessly as anything in pop music.

(Soundbite of music)

Ms. MACCOLL: (Singing) Oh, you shouldn't have kissed me. You got me so
excited. And when you asked me out, I really was delighted. So we went to a
pub in ...(unintelligible) Park, and we cheered on England as the sky grew
dark. Oh, you shouldn't have kissed me. You started a fire, but then I found
out that you're a serial liar. You lied about your status. You lied about
your life. You never mentioned your three children and the fact you have a
wife. Now it's single-and-two, love me and nil, and I know just how those
Colombians feel. If you hadn't passed out while...

TUCKER: Listeners steeped in Latin music may be more churlish, pointing out
that Maccoll's phrasing isn't as fluid as the best Latin music vocalists and
that her English backup musicians don't swing as loosely or authentically.
But I found the music's occasional stiffness and clumsiness endearing, the
sound of a fan having a good time.

Ms. MACCOLL: (Singing) She awakes when the sun has found her face, and she
reaches for the tin where she keeps important things. A cigarette, a magic
bean, a page torn from a magazine and a letter that he sent full of promises
and dreams, of how he walks across the jungle, across the desert to the
bright, shiny city by the sea.

TUCKER: In its own way, "Tropical Brainstorm" is as much one woman's comic
diary as, say, "Bridget Jones's" was and deserves as much attention. All her
life, Maccoll was better known among her fellow musicians than to a worldwide
audience. The tart, tangy tunes on "Tropical Brainstorm" fully capture
everything that was smart, funny and endearing about a woman who deserves to
be missed well beyond her cult following.

After her death, Bono from U2 called her the Noel Coward of her generation.
That may be going a bit far but it suggests the affection that Kirsty Maccoll
and her music inspired.

(Soundbite of music)

CONAN: Ken Tucker is critic at large for Entertainment Weekly.

Ms. MACCOLL: (Singing) There's a brand-new car in your driveway and a blonde
new girl in your bed. You've everything you ever wished for, happy little
bubble head. And you can't fill it up with promises. You can't fill it up
with lies. And you can't fill it up with business lunches. Oh, but you can
try. Who am I to criticize you? Just a girl that you despise. Welcome to
designer living. This is your designer life.

CONAN: Coming up, from "Talk Soup" to "Nurse Betty" with Greg Kinnear. We'll
be back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Greg Kinnear on his movie "Nurse Betty"
NEAL CONAN, host:

Greg Kinnear is awfully busy these days. He stars in the new movie "Someone
Like You" and his earlier turn in "Nurse Betty" is now available on video and
DVD. Not bad for a guy who used to host "Talk Soup" on cable TV. Last year
he spoke with Terry Gross about "Nurse Betty" in which he co-starred with
Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock and Renee Zellweger as Betty. She's a naive
young woman who witnesses a gruesome murder. Her slime bag husband is killed
by two hit men. She's so traumatized that she confuses her favorite soap
opera with reality and she starts to believe that she's the lost love of the
soap opera's main character, the brilliant surgeon Dr. David Ravell. That's
Kinnear's part. Here he is in a scene from the soap with one of the nurses.

(Soundbite from "Nurse Betty")

Ms. SUNG HI LEE: ("Jasmine") You know, you can't keep going like this, David.
It's not good for you or anybody else.

Mr. GREG KINNEAR: ("Dr. David Ravell") Do I have a choice, Jasmine?

Ms. LEE: You know you do. Sometimes it seems that you're...

Mr. KINNEAR: What?

Ms. LEE: ...running away from something.

Mr. KINNEAR: I'm not running from anything. I'm trying to live with it,
with the moment that won't leave me alone. Why did I let her go by herself
that night? Why did I have to play racquetball with Lonnie? She'd still be
here if it weren't for that.

Ms. LEE: Now you listen to me, no matter how many procedures you take on,
it's not going to bring her back.

Mr. KINNEAR: I know that, or at least I thought I did. Lately I just feel
so disconnected. The only time I really feel alive is when I'm working on a
patient. Then I can forget.

Ms. LEE: And the rest of the time?

Mr. KINNEAR: You ever feel like something really special's about to happen
to you, Jasmine? You don't know what it is or where it'll come from, but you
know that it's coming.

TERRY GROSS, host:

Greg Kinnear, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Mr. KINNEAR: Well, thank you for having me.

GROSS: In this movie, you play an actor who plays a doctor in a soap opera.
So in those soap opera episodes, when you're the doctor, do you play the
doctor differently as this actor being the doctor than you would as Greg
Kinnear playing a doctor?

Mr. KINNEAR: I certainly hope so.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. KINNEAR: I think the character I play--you know, the actor George
McCord, in this particular movie, is not necessarily a great actor. I don't
think he's necessarily mastered much in the way of subtlety in terms of his
performance ability. And I would hope to perhaps underplay some of the
emoting that...

GROSS: Yes.

Mr. KINNEAR: ...he tends to take to the nth degree. But, you know, there is
a--in fairness, too, we have some fun with, you know, the soap opera element
in this movie. But in fairness to actors that are on these shows, I mean,
there's an enormous amount of technical detail involved in what these people
do. I went down to "General Hospital" for a couple of days and watched this,
and it's so specific in terms of the marks that they have to hit, the huge
amount of pages that they have to cover in a single day. We do maybe a page,
maybe two pages a day in movies. They do about 35, 40.

And, of course, lastly, they have to say this preposterous dialogue that must
fall from their mouths, somewhat not so gracefully, and all of it has to, you
know, be kind of oversold because it's a show that comes on in the middle of
the day when a lot of people are kind of working, kind of half-watching the
television, one eye on it. So the big looks, the big music, the big vocal
exchanges and the lines all sort of create this little bit of comic element to
a soap opera. But I don't think it's necessarily bad actors. Again, that
being said, I don't think the actor I play in this movie is a particularly
good one.

GROSS: What are some of your favorite lines from the soap opera that you had
to not only do, but overdo?

Mr. KINNEAR: `I just know that there's something special out there for me
somewhere.' I don't know--there were a series of great lines. Some of these
were penned by the original screenwriters, you know, John Richards and James
Flamberg. And Neil LeBute, who was our great director in this movie, also
wrote a series of pages for the soap opera so that as you watch the movie, the
soap opera story plays out kind of on the sidelines of this film. So you're
seeing a movie and, within the movie, a soap opera story that is being closely
watched by all the real-life characters in the movie.

GROSS: What are the secrets to bad acting? What are the secrets to playing
an actor who's a bad actor?

Mr. KINNEAR: I just think it's...

GROSS: Timing. Timing's everything.

Mr. KINNEAR: Yeah. I guess timing or something. It was just like, you
know--for me, I think it's saying things at the wrong pitch, at the wrong
volume, at the wrong time with the wrong kind of--I mean, anything that didn't
feel organic was absolutely right on for certainly what we were going for.
And, you know, at the same time, you know, we were trying to not really send
up soap operas or spoof them, because that would have distracted from our main
story in the movie, but we were certainly trying to exploit a little bit what
that world is and have some fun with it.

GROSS: Now we're talking about playing a not-very-good actor. You didn't go
to, like, acting school and everything. You really kind of stumbled into
acting in a way after being on TV. You got a really good part in "Sabrina."
And then in one of your early movies--you know, 1997, this is your second
really big part in "As Good As It Gets." You started with Jack Nicholson.
You won a National Board of Review's best supporting actor award, nomination
for an Academy Award, and that's all pretty good for, you know, early acting
career for somebody who didn't even study acting. What was it like for you to
get started in movies without that kind of background?

Mr. KINNEAR: You know, it was very scary and very intimidating. My first,
you know, experience was, you know, "Sabrina" with Sydney Pollack directing,
and Harrison Ford was in it, like you said. And it was, you know, a bit
overwhelming. I certainly tried to, you know, not bring any sense of
confidence lacking or moping around the set. I tried to act like, `Yeah,
sure, I belong here. I know what I'm doing here.'

But, you know, to be sure, I was definitely a little overwhelmed by the
circumstances. But I had, in Sydney, a great director and somebody who walked
me through the process and kind of, you know, helped me find my way through
all of this. And it's been something that I've tried to employ since then. I
really do believe that the director, although not always successful in
realizing the outcome of the movie, is your best bet as an actor. They're the
person who will most challenge you and most help you solve the problems of who
your character is and finding a performance that's hopefully interesting.

GROSS: Let me play a clip from your 1997 movie "As Good As It Gets." And you
played an artist who was gay. Jack Nicholson played your homophobic next-door
neighbor, who's also a writer and an obsessive-compulsive. Early in the film,
your studio is robbed and you're badly beaten. And in this scene that we're
going to hear, you're in a wheelchair. You've just found out that you're also
completely broke, and you have nobody to help you. But Nicholson has at least
been helping out a little bit by walking your dog, even though he hates dogs.
Here's the scene.

(Soundbite from "As Good As It Gets")

Mr. KINNEAR ("Simon"): Thank you for walking him.

(Soundbite of dog barking)

Mr. KINNEAR: If you'll excuse me, I'm not feeling so well.

Mr. JACK NICHOLSON ("Melvin"): Eww, this place smells like (censored).

Mr. KINNEAR: Go away.

Mr. NICHOLSON: This--this cleaning lady doesn't...

Mr. KINNEAR: Please just leave!

Mr. NICHOLSON: What happened to your queer party friends?

Mr. KINNEAR: Get out of here! Nothing worse than having to feel this way in
front of you.

Mr. NICHOLSON: Nellie, you're a disgrace to depression.

(Soundbite of door opening)

Mr. KINNEAR: Rot in hell, Melvin.

Mr. NICHOLSON: No need to stop being a lady. Quit worrying. You'll be back
on your knees in no time.

(Soundbite of scuffle and dog barking)

Mr. KINNEAR: Is this fun for you? Hmm? You lucky devil, it just keeps
getting better and better, doesn't it? I'm losing my apartment, Melvin, and
Frank, he wants me to beg my parents, who haven't called me, for help, and I
won't. And I--I don't want to paint anymore. So the life that I was trying
for is over. The life that I had is gone, and I'm feeling so damned sorry for
myself that it's difficult to breathe. It's high times for you, isn't it,
Melvin? `The gay neighbor is terrified.' Terrified!

GROSS: That's Greg Kinnear with Jack Nicholson in a scene from "As Good As It
Gets."

Tell me how you decided to play this character, this artist who is gay--how
weak and how strong, how serious and how funny, 'cause the character's a mix
of that. There's scenes where he's really weak, scenes where he's strong,
scenes where he's really sad or serious and scenes where he's very funny.

Mr. KINNEAR: Mm-hmm. Well, I've always--you know, when I first read the
script, I was just amazed at the potential of what that character could be.
And to me, he seemed to have many things, you know, materialistically and a
certain amount of that kind of those unstable friendships, those shell
associations that we have around us sometimes, who they're there for you, but
they're not really there for you. And he had a lot of those types of things
that weren't built on very solid ground initially in the movie. And, of
course, he goes through that beating.

And I think he really loses everything. He loses everything. He loses all of
those things around him and even his own sense of worth and his own sense of
who he is. And for him, the journey is rediscovering what those things are.
And his having done that, through the help of this odd waitress, complete
stranger in his life, and this, you know, what he calls horrible, you know,
beast of a human being, or whatever the quote is, are the things that actually
help him find what it is that he really is. And I think that, you know, he's
better off. He's not going to need probably any of the things that he did at
the beginning of the story line.

So that's, you know, a great arc for any character, and it's, you know--what I
look for in scripts is: Is there some sort of journey here? Is there some
line? And some movies provide the opportunity to do that, some don't. But
the ones that do, the ones that allow for some sort of circle to take place or
some sort of emotional journey, either up or down, are what's most interesting
to me.

GROSS: Well, Greg Kinnear, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. KINNEAR: Thank you, Terry.

CONAN: Greg Kinnear spoke with Terry Gross. "Nurse Betty" is now out on DVD
and video.

After a short break, a review of the new movie "Town & Country." This is
FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: New comedy "Town & Country"
NEAL CONAN, host:

Warren Beatty, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Garry Shandling star in the new
comedy "Town & Country." Film critic Henry Sheehan says this entertaining
adult farce about marriage and infidelity works most of the time.

HENRY SHEEHAN reporting:

Every joke doesn't hit, every scene doesn't sparkle and it has its share of
misfires, but "Town & Country" is far, far from the intensive-care case its
troubled production history might indicate. The romantic comedy is finally
sneaking into theaters this week two years behind schedule, and while the
attentive viewer will notice a flurry of corrective edits here, an inserted
line of dialogue there, this is a gratifyingly smart, tart and adult feature.

The movie's first image is of Hollywood's favorite aging Don Juan, Warren
Beatty. The actor who plays wealthy architect and formerly faithful husband,
Porter Stoddard, is sitting up in bed in post-coital gloom. He's watching his
lover, played by Nastassja Kinski, play the cello in the nude, a scintillating
sight that leaves him cold because, as he tells us in voiceover, he's been
happily married 25 years and doesn't really like classical music.

In two shots in only a few seconds, director Peter Chelsom, who ironically has
been derided by Hollywood insiders for losing control of this production, not
only gives us a wealth of information but introduces the dramatic tension that
will drive the next hour and a half. Porter, vaguely worried that he's
missing the sexual boat, wanders passive-aggressively into affairs whose brief
physical pleasures are immediately followed by an onslaught of guilt.

This is the stuff of farce, which is really what "Town & Country" is. Just
days after the opening scene, Porter and his wife, Ellie, played by a
relatively reserved Diane Keaton, are feted for their golden anniversary in a
Parisian restaurant by their best friends, a married couple played by Goldie
Hawn and Garry Shandling. But Shandling's character, Griffin, is also
cheating, and in the film's very next sequence he has had the bad luck to get
caught by his wife, Mona.

Porter's worried about getting caught; Griffin is caught. In the middle of
this, Ellie comes up with an idea.

(Soundbite from "Town & Country")

Mr. WARREN BEATTY: ("Porter Stoddard") What are you thinking?

Ms. DIANE KEATON: ("Ellie Stoddard") I'm thinking women know.

Mr. BEATTY: Women know?

Ms. KEATON: I knew that this was going to happen. I knew it. You want to be
honest about this whole thing? You want to just put it out on the table? I
knew when we came here that very first time. I knew it was over. Do you
remember when Griffin didn't even look at Mona? It was like Mona was somebody
in Cleveland. Griffin was like completely fixated on that idiotic little...

Mr. BEATTY: Yeah.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. KEATON: What's so funny?

Mr. BEATTY: Yeah, I know. I know, you're right.

Ms. KEATON: He was looking at that stupid little hot-shot girl.

Mr. BEATTY: It was--yeah. Yeah, the hat-check girl with the thing...

Ms. KEATON: It was embarrassing.

Mr. BEATTY: ...but, you know, let's be fair to the guy. I mean, he's, you
know...

Ms. KEATON: But, honey, I just feel really badly for Mona.

Mr. BEATTY: I feel badly for her. She's my oldest friend, but I feel bad.

Ms. KEATON: She's lost. Actually she's lost, Porter. And I think you should
go and help her. I think you should help her with her house down in
Mississippi.

Mr. BEATTY: Sure. I mean, I...

Ms. KEATON: Would you do that for me, Honey?

Mr. BEATTY: Sure. Sure.

Ms. KEATON: Do you know how lucky we are?

Mr. BEATTY: I do know.

SHEEHAN: Chelsom has always been a bit of an oddball filmmaker. His previous
movies, "Funny Bones" and "The Mighty," were characterized by eccentric
rhythms. "Town & Country," whose script was written by cult filmmaker Michael
Laughlin and Hollywood's drollest sexual comedian, Buck Henry, features a
barrage of complications, adding wild characters up to the very last minute.

But Chelsom refuses to be hurried along or at least hurried for no good
reason. The breakneck speed you'd expect for farce is set aside in favor of a
style that draws out the sheer strangeness of the script. In an early scene,
Porter is flummoxed by the sexual activity that goes on in his own house
outside of the bedroom he shares with Ellie. Out in the kitchen for a
late-night snack, he's joined one by one by his household's male sexual
partners. Beatty, displaying the camouflage perplexity that is his best comic
weapon, presides over a late-night table of fornicators like an unlucky
Falstaff dining with the jovial ghosts of his own youth.

It's hard to imagine the film working without Beatty. Now in his early 60s,
the star's persistence in playing sexually active leading men may be less a
case of personal vanity than of idealism. We don't see the architect tricked
or misled into affairs, or even bravely initiate one. Rather, he pretends
he's allowing himself to be seduced, though he's done everything in his power
to be in a ready position. Porter is a bit of a weasel, a complicated man,
and complicated leading men are a rarity in an American cinema where people
are either good or bad and no one treads the middle ground.

CONAN: Henry Sheehan is film critic for The Orange County Register.

(Credits)

CONAN: Terry Gross returns on Monday. We close today with a 1954 recording
of singer Al Hibbler, who performed with the Duke Ellington Orchestra for
nearly a decade. Hibler died earlier this week at the age of 85. I'm Neal
Conan.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. AL HIBBLER: (Singing) I let a song go out of my heart. It was the
sweetest melody. I know I lost heaven 'cause you ...(unintelligible). Since
you and I have drifted apart life doesn't mean a thing to me. Please come
back, sweet music. I knew I was wrong. Am I too late to make amends? You
knew that we were meant to be more than just friends. Just friends. I let a
song go out of my heart. Life doesn't mean a thing to me. I want no sweet
music until you return someday.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

Unidentified Woman: This is NPR, National Public Radio.

Mr. PAUL McCARTNEY: (Singing) Blackbirds singing in the dead of night.

CONAN: On the next FRESH AIR, Terry Gross talks with Paul McCartney about
Liverpool, The Beatles and about poetry. Join us for the next FRESH AIR.

Mr. McCARTNEY: (Singing) You were only waiting for this moment to arrive.
Black bird singing in the dead of night.
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