I considered whether I wanted to have the kind of career where you are, by and large, asked to do the same thing, over and over, like Ford or Bruce Willis or, eventually, Russell Crowe. Certainly there are ever-larger paychecks, but never any surprises. I suppose I could have said yes to Paramount’s unconscionable demands and held on to the role. But if that choice meant more time with David Kirkpatrick, Bob Rehme, Phillip Noyce, Don Granger, and all the other “gentlemen” I had washed up alongside in LA over the past five years, I wasn’t so sure. Then I thought of the decision-making that had led me to scuttle the Broadway production of Prelude in order to do The Marrying Man, and things became clearer in my life than they had been for some time. I told them I wanted to do both Streetcar and the film. They said, essentially, “Fuck you and good riddance.”
The fact that Paramount was negotiating with two people at the same time was infuriating enough. I often wonder why people in those circumstances don’t simply call you into their office and tell you they don’t want to work with you anymore. I’m sure some settlement could have been reached. But as studios, networks, and talent agencies increasingly hire self-serving, rapacious types such as Kirkpatrick, it’s less likely. I could just see the Paramount group high-fiving each other for having engaged Ford while not having to pay me a dime. The most unpleasant part, though, was that Barry London, another cookie-cutter exec at the studio, took it upon himself to announce my departure to the press and blame it all on me. I had “overplayed my hand at the negotiating table” was how one report put it. I learned that when you’re not Harrison Ford, simply asking for the schedule may be “overplaying your hand.”
Eventually, Patriot Games was made with Ford in the role of Jack Ryan, and it made less money than Hunt when adjusted for inflation.
On a movie set, the cry is “Back to one!” to alert the cast and extras to reset to their original positions before the camera is rolled for the next take. Whenever I arrived at a place where the film business felt uncomfortable or downright unsafe for me, the place I often returned to was the theater. Onstage, we trust that the material works, we assume all of the actors are genuinely talented, and the work itself is the focus, unencumbered by the bullshit that often interferes with moviemaking. Back to one, indeed. It was time to go home. It was time to do a play. As far as I was concerned, it is the play.
9
What She Was Used To
Standing on a footbridge in Chicago on an April evening in 1991, the freezing temperature at a degree only Chicagoans could comprehend, I spoke with Michael Gruskoff, the producer of the film version of Prelude to a Kiss. “When is this thing scheduled to come out?” I asked. “Hopefully, by December,” he replied. “Good,” I said. “Because we’re going to win everything. Best picture, actor, actress, direction, screenplay.” The more seasoned Gruskoff managed a slight smile and said, “That would be nice.”
Adapting Prelude to the screen had proved to be difficult. Finding a cast that satisfied Norman and Craig as well as the Fox executives who had bought the rights was the first challenge. During that process, however, my next opportunity to meet a truly great actor materialized when Norman called me to say that Sir Alec Guinness was interested in the film and, pending the meeting, inclined to do it. I thought I might faint. Before long, I found myself seated across from Guinness at the old Wyndham Hotel in New York.
As had happened when I had met or worked with Pacino, De Niro, Tony Hopkins, Julie Andrews, George C. Scott, Meryl, Ava Gardner, McCartney, Gregory Peck, Tony Bennett, Brando, and the other artists whom I had admired, even worshipped, the sight and sound of Alec Guinness unleashed a torrent of his most famous cinematic accomplishments in my mind. Legendary movie moments began unspooling: The young Guinness in Great Expectations, admonishing John Mills not to “fill one’s mouth to its utmost capacity.” As Fagin in Oliver Twist (“What right have you to butcher me?”). His Academy Award–winning performance in The Bridge on the River Kwai. The Horse’s Mouth, Our Man in Havana, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Star Wars, and too many others to name. Alec Guinness, a totem in film acting, was now right before my eyes, making one simple request. “I’m afraid I must shoot the film in New York,” he stated quietly. “I must be able to Concorde back and forth to London to see my wife.” Norman had told me that Guinness’s wife was ill and that he needed to visit her periodically while shooting.
Quite quickly, however, my dream of costarring with Guinness disappeared as the Fox execs rode roughshod over Norman and Craig’s casting desires. Ultimately, to shoot the film in New York was too expensive, so Guinness had to withdraw. Naturally, Norman had wanted Mary-Louise to claim the role that was rightly hers, but Joe Roth, the head of Fox, and Roger Birnbaum, his second, protested. They insisted that Mary-Louise and I would need to be bolstered by a big name in the role of the old man, and strongly suggested Jack Lemmon or Art Carney. Norman told me he would rather not make the film if it meant hiring someone he did not see in the role. And then, in what reminded me of the Julie Andrews/My Fair Lady casting tale, Mary-Louise was gone and Meg Ryan was playing the lead. As a concession to Norman and Craig, the remarkable theater veteran Sydney Walker was cast as the old man.
Roth, a successful executive who’d also directed with little or no success, had overseen countless films from his office, but seemed to have learned next to nothing about how to create one. He and Birnbaum had me in to see them on a couple of occasions, hoping to enlist me in their cause of placating Norman about specific creative decisions they had made. In one meeting, after the film was finished and had been screened for test audiences, Birnbaum announced, “We have to cut the kiss.” Roth sat by, nodding pensively. By that, Birnbaum meant the eponymous kiss, the kiss between the old man (now embodying my wife) and me, THE kiss, which is the incontrovertible emotional climax of the film. “What?” I asked. “We have to cut it,” Birnbaum said. “At the screening, there was audible groaning.” Roth repeated, “Audible groaning.” This would be Prelude to a Hug. Their idea was like suggesting that The Longest Yard be moved to a basketball court to reduce the number of cast members, but still titled The Longest Yard. Birnbaum, whose round, boyish face, expressive eyes, and silly intonation reminded me of a borscht belt comic out of Broadway Danny Rose, just stared at me. “It’s gotta go.”