Norman and Craig told me they would sue. The idiocy of the Fox note was plain, so the kiss stayed. But the whole thing began to slowly swirl downward. Meg is a wonderful actress and was at the peak of her career then, but she was not Mary-Louise. We finished the film, and when it came out, Fox put minimal effort into supporting it. Some of the blame has to go to all of us for the final product because, during the shooting, we all began to wonder what it might have been like if Mary-Louise had been there. That winter, I was invited to Craig’s Christmas party. In a throng of people, music blaring, Mary-Louise appeared. She saw me, burst into tears, and bolted away. I realized that there really are rare occasions when there is one person who is meant to play a role. That was true of Mary-Louise. The movie tanked.
Normally I try to avoid working in the summer. Being from Long Island means that an extended celebration of the beach, boats, and sunsets feels like a birthright. However, when my agent, Michael Bloom, was contacted on the heels of Prelude about the film version of David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play Glengarry Glen Ross, I broke my usual routine. Like Prelude, this would be another adaptation of stage material, but the two films were night and day. Pacino was set as the lead, Ricky Roma. But Bloom had an instinct about the project due to Pacino’s reputation for being in and out of certain projects, including Glengarry. So Bloom made a suggestion to the producers: if Pacino faltered again, let me play Roma. They agreed. Pacino flip-flopped again, Bloom called them on it, and count to three, I was set to play Roma. But Pacino is the person they wanted in that role, so when he reconsidered, the producers asked Bloom “if I would mind stepping aside.” It was just a few months after the Red October situation. I was now dealing with a group of people who politely asked if I could accommodate them, unlike the assholes at Paramount who violated agreements and stabbed people in the back as a matter of course, so I chose to accommodate them.
Al played Ricky, and I took the role of Blake, a part not in Mamet’s original play. Mamet’s work, in my mind, is often about predation among human beings. I was told that Blake is there to incite the other men, men who are not criminal by nature, to commit a crime. Blake is the screw that turns and pressures them to do something desperate. Blake, with his turgid language and metronomic delivery, is sent to hammer home the message: if you don’t make money, and make it right now, you’re out.
The rest of the cast was like an acting school, an assembly of men so varied in style, I knew that whatever happened here, it was going to be special. The cast included Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, and Jonathan Pryce. While I came to rehearsal with a fondness and high regard for everyone, I outright worshipped Jack Lemmon. The great actor and film star was a role model to me, especially for the signature key he often played in, a combination of weakness and valor, doubt and resolve, anxiety and clarity. Few actors have appeared as vividly human as Lemmon did on-screen. He had starred in so many great films, including Mister Roberts; Bell, Book and Candle; The Apartment; Days of Wine and Roses; The Odd Couple; and The China Syndrome. Lemmon, despite the corrosive tone of Mamet’s material, was an unerring gentleman of the old school throughout. Here, perhaps, was the great opportunity I had missed with Alec Guinness. Lemmon is breathtaking in the role of Shelley “The Machine” Levene and the fact that he wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar is a crime. He should have won it.
The director, James Foley, is a smart guy. He had a great script. He brought in the talented Juan Ruiz Anchia as cinematographer. With a cast like that, a good director chimes in specifically and as needed. Foley stood back and let everyone do their thing. He did offer me a truly fabulous piece of direction. I was anxious about shooting a scene in which I so relentlessly harangue some of the greatest actors in the business. Foley said, in so many words, “It’s like that scene in Patton, where George C. Scott slaps the soldier in the medical tent. He’s doing it for the coward’s own good and for the benefit of the other men. Patton asks, ‘You call yourself a soldier?’ Well, this is, ‘You call yourself a salesman?’ You’re doing it for their own good.”
That was all I needed, something to authorize me to lean into these guys without fear or doubt. People are always commenting to me about that scene in Glengarry, commending me for those blistering moments, but I’ve still never really understood audiences’ appetites for that kind of double-barreled acting. Mamet’s pieces are tough. You have to give the horse the stick out of the chute and all the way to the finish line. It’s mean and it’s relentless, and if you’re not exhausted by the end, you haven’t done the job. But as I get older, I’d rather do a more thoughtful role, like Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind or Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. Or I even fantasized about doing a comedy, a television sitcom written by some truly funny and crazy people! That sounded like fun.
As the Red October fiasco came and went, the fall of 1991 found me sitting on a couch in Kim’s house in LA believing that our relationship was coming to an end. In the past, I had a timer set, an unconscious alarm that went off at a certain point and told me to move on. My outer limit was around eighteen months. I’d met Kim in April of 1990. Now it was November of the next year, and the pressures of The Marrying Man, Kim’s failed real estate development deal in Braselton, Georgia (a very good opportunity that was just poorly executed), and her overall anxiety as a private person living a public life were mounting. My commitment to doing Streetcar had enabled Kirkpatrick to torpedo my Paramount deal, although I’m sure they would have figured out how to get rid of me even without it. Now it was time to go do that play. Kim said she felt Broadway was where actors go who can’t make it in the movies. I bit my tongue instead of saying that the opposite was more often the case. For some, the movies are where you go when you don’t have the talent for the stage.
My entertainment lawyer at that time was the colorful, reedy Jake Bloom (no relation to Michael), a guy who reminded me of a thinner Jerry Garcia. Bloom was one of the most connected and adroit players in Hollywood. So when he called to tell me that, in the wake of the Paramount implosion, he wanted me to meet another agent, I sensed how much trouble I was in. One Bloom in my life was poised to push the other Bloom over the side of the ship. Michael had been the only agent I’d ever had.