In The Edge, my character, Bob, is one of the more vacuous characters I’ve ever played, and it was interesting, sometimes fun, recalling people I had known, even worked with, who lent me some idea for the character. Bob is intimidated by Charles’s intellectual and psychological powers. It was not hard to play that while acting opposite Tony. At the end, Bob chooses to exonerate Charles’s wife, Mickey, out of respect for Charles. It was easy to love and respect Tony in the extreme as well.
Years later, when I performed in Peter Shaffer’s Equus on Long Island in 2010, I asked Shaffer if he thought it was worthwhile for me to see the original production, with Hopkins and Peter Firth, that is on tape at the Lincoln Center library. Shaffer said, “I don’t think so, only because the cast did not wish to be taped. So Roberta Maxwell did not perform that show. Firth put on a North Country accent, completely out of character. And Tony impersonated Larry Olivier the entire performance.” After a bit of a pause, he said, “Very naughty boys.” This actually came as no surprise to me. Hopkins is funny and a wonderful mimic. On the set of The Edge, Hopkins and I had played a game of dueling Richard Burtons. The goal was to not only impersonate Burton but to distill the self-destructive genius down to his essence. Eventually, Tony won the game for all time with his almost haiku-like incantation: “Elizabeth! Baubles and stones. White wine. Marbella.” Then he feigned passing out.
One of my favorite images from making films comes from shooting a scene with Tony, running through a glacier-fed stream, pursued by Bart the Bear. When we began the picture, the temperature was in the low seventies and we wore bug repellent. Weeks later, we wore thermal linings in our costumes as we spent the day in frigid water. Along the bank of the stream, the crew had situated a hot tub that we could jump into to stay warm between takes, as our costumes were already soaked through. I sat in that hot tub, smoking a great Cuban cigar and muttering, “Baubles and stones. White wine. Marbella.” Here I was that little boy again, repeating the famous actor’s lines. Only now, the famous actor was my costar and the lines were spoken to me over lunch. I’ll never have it that good again. Not ever.
The final ten minutes of The Edge are the only piece of my own film work that I can ever watch and enjoy. The movie got decent reviews and made a nickel or two at the box office. I returned to Alberta for many years after the film wrapped to ski at Lake Louise, Kicking Horse, and Banff. I loved it so much, I thought I’d move there.
There was a period during the ’90s when, if I asked a question, made a request, or sought a piece of information, before my sentence was even finished, the response would be, “Of course, Mr. Baldwin, of course.” After The Edge, things would change, irrevocably, in my film career. In some ways that was a good thing, insofar as the less power you believe you have, the simpler life can get. And simple is good in acting. It just took me a bit more time to learn that.
12
So Long as You Know
After The Edge, I grew tired of the limitations of studio moviemaking. And just in time, as that system had grown tired of me as well. You have to sell tickets. There are actors who are drug-addled, fornicating madmen. They are bullies who not only lack talent but also create some degree of difficulty wherever they work. There are actresses whose vanity and lack of self-awareness are so dense, you could split the atoms of their egos and fuel a reactor. Their behavior makes little difference, so long as their movies make money. On the other hand, you can be professional, committed, appropriately curious, hardworking, and collegial. But if the movies tank, you’re out.
The Edge was not successful in dollar terms. I asked my then agent, John Burnham at William Morris, if producers and execs would shun me because of the difficulties I’d had on films like The Marrying Man, The Juror (another incompatible director situation), and The Edge, as well as walking away from the Clancy series. Burnham’s reply was a memorable one: “It’s not that when they think of you, they hate you. They just don’t think of you at all.” Someone’s got to kiss the girl, blow up the bridge, punch the villain, deliver the stirring speech, fire some type of weapon, and then kiss the girl again. I was thirty-eight years old, with mixed success at best, and the studio movie business was moving on with other people.
When you are an apple that falls from the studio movie star tree and you’re ready to be made into the applesauce of the independent film world, the transition is frustrating and humbling, the greatest frustration being not the smaller budgets but the more limited time allowed to make a movie. Indie filmmaking means less time. A lot less. But it also presents a greater opportunity to produce your own films. Up to that point, I had exhibited only a slight interest in developing my own film projects. I had a company. I had creative partners. For a while, my partner was Walter Hill’s wife, Hildy Gottlieb, herself a successful agent at ICM, and a great colleague. But convincing studios and production companies, large and small, to gamble their resources on your belief about what an audience will want to see is the most difficult job in the business.