I Said Yes to Everything: A Memoir (36 page)

I
t was the summer of 1996. Randal Kleiser had asked me to join his many friends in the making of his film
It’s My Party
. It was a very personal story. Randal had been estranged from his partner of many years who was now dying of AIDS. It was a film about their reconciliation and about his partner’s decision to find a way out through a suicide party, with all his loving friends and family around him. Eric Roberts played the boyfriend. I was Eric’s Greek mother. In the cast were Randal’s friends Margaret Cho, Marlee Matlin, Olivia Newton-John, and Greg Harrison as Randal. We shot it in Randal’s house, so the intimacy was distracting.

I was staying in the guest bedroom at our friends Steve and Annie’s yellow house on Stone Canyon Drive, up the street from the Hotel Bel-Air. Joey and I had stayed often with Steve Verona; the little room with its four-poster bed and little TV was familiar and comfortable. The veranda overlooked the pool and the gardens.

Joey wasn’t with me. I felt isolated in a new way and a very uncomfortable way. I couldn’t seem to get inside my own skin. I hated parties with lots of people, and that’s what the set was to me. I loved the
desperation of my character in the script, but couldn’t seem to hang on to it. I developed shingles, blisters on my shoulders and down my back. I was up most of the night putting calamine lotion on the hard-to-reach places. I stayed in my little trailer on set as much as I could.

At Steven’s house I sat on an outside dining room chair, staring at the green pool on a cold, gray California day. Something bad was happening to me. I was losing feeling. The last time I felt close to this was at the end of my marriage to Arnie. I felt cold and scared. The migraines were also frequent. The last time I’d stayed in this room, Steve and Annie had given us a party. I’d had an incessant migraine and shot myself full of Imitrex. Suddenly I couldn’t move or speak. Joey opened the door to get me downstairs where everyone was waiting. He took one look at me and called our doctor, who told Joey to meet him at the hospital. I thought I’d had a stroke. I was sitting on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t speak. I could only look at Joey. Nothing came out of my mouth.

He called an ambulance, threw a blanket over me, and half carried me down the stairs to the car. I smiled at my friends clustered at the bottom. I felt apologetic, silly, dumb. The doctor met us at the hospital. It wasn’t a stroke, he said. It was a migraine episode, not uncommon. I had overmedicated myself with the Imitrex, taken three times the normal dose.

That had been a year ago. I’d had shingles, migraines, and now this new bizarre blank feeling.

I felt like I was walking through the film. I didn’t feel connected, and most of the time I didn’t feel like Eric’s mother. I did not feel like a good actress. I didn’t feel much of anything but fear.

When it came time for the scene where Eric says good-bye to his friends and to me, I stayed in the living room while he went to his bedroom to take the pills that would give him the death he wanted, before AIDS took over his body.

I had lost Nicky Dante to AIDS. Nicky, who danced with Joey in St. Louis, in the chorus, and co-wrote
A Chorus Line
. Joey, Belinda, and I celebrated the New Year with Nicky in Rome in 1984, the year before his death.

I sat quietly in the living room of the set till the crew returned and the cast was in place and Randal called “Action.” As they started moving Eric’s body past me—I feel dizzy as I write this—out of me erupted this sound, this roar, this scream, with hot tears washing, falling—of terror, longing, denial.

The last time this sound came out of me was when I ran into my mother’s surreal hospital room, looked at her troubled pale face with the frown between her eyes, and it washed over me that I couldn’t save her, that she was gone.

There was no holding back that eruption. No saving it for the close-up. I was carried away, and it was gone. It was probably my one true moment. It was probably inappropriate for the scene—too big, too raw, too ugly, too lifelike.

•   •   •

R
ight after finishing the film, Joey, Mary Beth, and I were invited to the Moscow International Film Festival. Mary Beth was close to Nikita Mikhalkov, the great Russian film director. We flew to gray Moscow. The Russian films were pretty dismal except for Mikhalkov’s documentary about his blond daughter, following her each year from her childhood on.

Nikita had a big, big personality, a big, expansive, handsome, vodka-drinking, peasant-song-singing, speechmaking, Russian maleness. He was filling the big hall in the ravenous drinking, dancing party afterward. He was flirting with Mary Beth. She was rosy with pleasure. Joey was pleasantly loaded. I went outside. The air was cold, cold. There was a wooden bridge, a wooden table, and two chairs.
Dark brown. Mary Beth and Joey came out onto the bridge, leaning up against it as they talked. “Mary Beth,” I called. She turned, walked over, and sat down. Mary Beth was and is my best friend. “Mary Beth, I’m in trouble,” I said. “I’m floating away.”

At home on West End Avenue, I went to one haughty psychopharmacologist, then a doughy psychopharmacologist. He gave me a whole Zoloft in his office. Within a few minutes I’d passed out on his carpet. I could feel myself losing consciousness. When I came to, he hurriedly put me in a cab and sent me home. I’m on a regular dose of Zoloft now. I bless it. I have a lot of complex problems, but losing myself isn’t one of them. For better or for worse, I’m right here.

J
oey’s ambitious. He’s competitive. He’s a player. Joey looks around and sees his friends, who are stars, or big directors, or big players even, and says, “Why not me? Why not me?” Hitting his chest with his fist! Why not? Coming from 6th and Lincoln, a corner of Little Italy in Wilmington, Delaware, Joey and his guy friends all outdid themselves, each in his own field. It’s the American way. This is the story of how I, basically, destroyed Joey’s dream. He blames it all on Bruce Willis, but I played a major role as director of his film, which starred Bruce and Maura Tierney, in Wilmington, Delaware, Joey’s hometown, in 1997.

The script was by a young talented married couple, the story of an over-the-hill pro hockey player, banged up from too many games, who gets so loaded one night that he makes his way back to his old childhood home and passes out in the doghouse in the yard. The house is now occupied by Maura Tierney, a single mother and the sister of his boyhood friend, her nine-year-old daughter, and her seven-year-old son. A love story, of course—how this charming bum wears down the resistance of this tough, smart, but vulnerable lady. Perfect casting, and a charming, fresh story.

Joey sent the script to Bruce in Idaho. The invitation to go to Idaho to talk with Bruce Willis about our movie was the clarion call Joey had waited for. He had a commercial script, ready to go. If he could attach a star like Bruce Willis to it, the money to make it would come through. Joey would join his friends Michael Douglas, Michael Phillips, Danny DeVito—the charmed circle of producers who were one after another getting their films made, and that he, with all his ambitious heart, longed to join.

Bruce was no stranger. We’d known him as a charismatic bartender at Café Central in New York, from charismatic boyfriend to our Dinah for a couple of months, to breakout charismatic TV star. Bruce got the TV show
Moonlighting
and became a big star; the rest is history.

He was now a movie star, with a little dip in his career, but very bankable. He was represented by Arnold Rifkin, an important agent at the time, and the brother of one of our best friends, Ron Rifkin.

Joey and I traveled to Idaho. I felt a little out of my home waters. The Italian kid from 6th and Lincoln and the Jersey boy found common ground.

Out on the sparkling blue, blue lake in Bruce’s motorboat, I felt detached. Bruce was a big deal now, a big movie star, looking to raise his actor image a bit. Joey was looking to fulfill his life’s dream. I felt conflicted. So much depended on the director with this huge male star.

On the other hand, Joey knew better than to even dream of handing this film to a better-known male director. Our marriage would be over.

When Bruce asked me, sitting in his den, how I saw his character in the movie, I told him, “There is nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know better than I do. You’ve lived this; you’re a working-class kid from Jersey. You’ve charmed and
hondled
your way up
from bartender to movie star. Use it. Who better to play this part than you?” I meant it.

He said yes.

Joey put the package together. Andy Vajna, who used to share office space with Joey and was now a big producer, put up the $28 million.

I hadn’t thought yet about casting the woman, but Bruce said, “If I do it, I want Maura Tierney.” Once I’d seen her TV show
NewsRadio
, I wanted her as much as Bruce did. Maura was funny, real, fresh, very pretty, and sexy in a nice-girl way.

Joey decided to set up the movie in his old neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware. All the streets had great character. Germantown, the Jewish section, the duPont estates, and of course the Italian section, his family’s house at 6th and Lincoln, where Rachel, his mother, was on an oxygen machine, staring all day at the TV. Living in the house with Rachel were his twin sister, Phyllis, and his brother, Ralph, who became a driver on the movie.

All around were Joey’s best friends from childhood to today: Peter Pappa, Albert Vietri, Richie Zambanini, Verino Pettinaro. All neighborhood guys who made good, moved into mini mansions, made their working-class families proud—his mob.

Now Joey was showing them all. He was a movie producer, dragging the great carcass of a $28-million-dollar movie into the cave with Bruce riding it.

Joey’s last partner in the commercial business, Billy Fraker, a legendary DP, was coming on board as cameraman. Carol Oditz had done costume design on many films I’d directed, and Doug Kraner was a brilliant production designer who had done
No Place Like Home
with us. The editor I longed for, Sam O’Steen, with whom I’d never worked but admired, finally said yes.

We opened production offices in Wilmington. Doug started
building the house we were to use as Maura’s house, Bruce’s old family home. Roberta Morris, who is transcribing these words now, was in production in our offices, as she’s been on all my films.

St. Anthony Parish was electrified. The community was welcoming us to use their homes, cast their children, and they catered our meals. All were on board: the priests, the sisters, the Catholic schools that Joey had attended and dropped out of. He was the center of attention, admiration. Joey was the star.

In New York, we had taken over Madison Square Garden and made a deal with the National Hockey League for a five-camera shoot of a hockey game between the New York Rangers and the Pittsburgh Penguins. One of the lead players, who had a build like Bruce’s, wore a jersey with Bruce’s character’s number on it to intercut with the close-ups in our movie.

We’d rented ice-skating rinks in Delaware and Pennsylvania for casting and practice sessions and hired a seasoned skating choreographer who worked for weeks on the young Bruce’s skating. He advised us on choosing young athletes from junior teams from New York to Pennsylvania. Tom Bernard of Sony Pictures Classics, a serious hockey player himself, became a great resource for the hockey segments. We hired his entire hockey team to play a rival team in the movie, along with his son, who was a great skater and the right age for some of the childhood scenes.

It was exciting.

We were working with the young Bruce look-alike on a frozen pond we’d built to resemble an ice-covered swimming hole. We’d shot scenes on the ice that had to do with Bruce’s character’s past with the young skaters—all stuff we could shoot without Bruce.

Finally Bruce arrived. Maura arrived. Her new husband was home in California.

We had a table read, which was delicious, and a day or two of rehearsal for me to get a sense of staging with Billy Fraker. Good. First day of shooting, our editor, Sam O’Steen, called. He’d decided to take another job. That was a blow.

I went to the trailer that Bruce’s hairdresser was using. I knocked on the door. The young woman who was doing his hair came down the stairs. “He doesn’t like to be asked about his hair,” she said.

“Huh?” I said. We were doing camera tests that day, makeup and hair. I was sufficiently paranoid about my own looks to understand another actor’s paranoia. But I didn’t exactly know how to approach this. Bruce was a regular-looking guy, not stereotypically handsome, but a turn-on in most people’s books, hair or no hair.

Bruce Willis has something actors die for: authenticity. He’s authentic. Comfortable within his own skin, and charming on film. Like Gable, like Tracy, like Clint Eastwood. But while making our movie he was going through a transition; he was insecure and bored, a deadly combination for any actor, in particular the star.

We did the camera tests. Bruce bald. Bruce with close-cropped hair, a good hairpiece. He asked what I thought. Either was fine with me, but what would make him most comfortable?

“The hairpiece.”

“The one you have on? This one?”

“Yeah. Do you want to see the others?”

“I don’t think we need to, Bruce. What do you think, Billy?”

“Either way.”

I wish I’d said bald. The hairpiece became such a focus. I should have been the first to recognize it. During the five weeks we shot, the hairpiece changed slightly every other day.

In the meantime, I found I could hardly get out of bed. I was sick with something. We’d rented a charming, many-bedroomed white
house in the suburbs. Mary Beth had a bedroom. So did our chef, Steve, whom we had found in South Carolina while we were shooting
Staying Together
.

I was lying in bed, fully dressed. Joey and Mary Beth were looking down at me. “I can’t get up.”

The smart young doctor said, “Your thyroid is out of whack.” Apparently, the gland that supplies energy was not working. He gave me pills. It helped, but not enough. I felt slightly underwater for the whole film. One thought behind. One blink behind. One step behind.

When you do film, you’re up at five a.m., especially if you’re directing. You and camera are planning the day’s shots. I would have preferred doing them at the end of the day, but Billy Fraker didn’t want to. I didn’t want a conflict, so I agreed.

•   •   •

B
ehind the scenes, Dinah was in her eighth month with my first grandchild; Roberta, in the production office, had a miscarriage; and Belinda got into a car accident on a slippery bridge and broke her foot.

Then there began to be other factors, the main one being that the newly married Maura was not flirting with Bruce. He was becoming turned off, taking a private plane after work on weekends to party and play with his band, missing his coaching sessions with the pro skater we had hired. On set, Bruce seemed irritated and disinterested.

The spark between them, the one this film depended on, was definitely dimming. We filmed a less than exciting ice-skating excursion, where he teaches Maura and the kids. I had begun to feel his boredom, and he didn’t like the kid we’d hired as Maura’s son.

Life for an actor in Wilmington is deadly. It’s not Jersey. It’s not Hollywood, or New York, or Idaho. Joey was not available for Bruce to
play with; the second week Joey checked himself in and out of the hospital with heart pains.

I was not helpful. I was not inspired. I was tired and irritated. In one scene Maura feeds the dog, putting dry food in his dish. Bruce suggested that she have her back to him and bend from the waist to fill the dog dish. Doggy style? Maura looked at me, hard.

“That’s tasteless, Bruce . . .” I said.

He argued. He was looking for a way in, the wrong way. He needed a comfortable, Bruce-funny way into the part, an outrageous-Bruce way in, and that’s what I was looking for, too. He was critical, not involved. An awful place to be as an actor. I’d like to ask him why. I’d like to ask Maura what she felt happened, or didn’t.

The problem when you are a star, when the money rests on you as an actor, is that your freedom to fail is gone. You can’t take chances. If you can’t take chances anymore, what kind of actor are you?

One morning, as Billy and I were figuring out the shots for the day, Bruce showed up and demanded a shot list, a written list of all the camera moves. This was a bad sign, a sign of distrust of me.

Bruce had brought a pal to hang with, I’ll call him Salvio, whom he made a producer on the film. Salvio went off with him on weekends. Every weekend he took off in his plane, ignoring that we had a professional skater standing by to work with him. One weekend, it was to Bali, where he was opening a Planet Hollywood. Bruce saw the dailies each night; now he wanted to see the film cut.

No editor. Right. No editor had been hired to replace Sam O’Steen. Big, big mistake. No argument there.

We hired an available guy and cut a couple of scenes together. Arnold Rifkin and Demi Moore came down to watch them with him.

“Do you think it’s sexy?” he asked them. “Do you think I’m sexy?”

“No,” Demi said. “I don’t.”

And that, folks, was that.

•   •   •

A
rnold called a meeting with Joey and me at our house. “Bruce feels you’re losing control, Lee. He needs a strong hand.”

The next day I went into Bruce’s dressing room to talk to him and Arnold. Bruce was happier than I’d seen him in ages. “I love you, Lee, but it just didn’t work out.”

“Bruce, the scenes are charming. They work.” And they did. The tension between Maura and Bruce actually paid off. They were supposed to be wary of each other, of course, before they fall in love. What else do you do in an hour-and-a-half film? There was one scene of Bruce by himself on a balcony. It was snowing. Suddenly he climbed the railing and howled like a wolf into the wind. It was shockingly fresh and original.

•   •   •

B
ruce asked another director, Dennis Dugan from
Moonlighting
, to come down to Wilmington to take over as director. Arnold and Bruce had made some behind-the-scenes arrangement with Andy Vajna, who’d put up the money. Bruce took responsibility for the eighteen million. Joey and I were fired.

LOS ANGELES TIMES
, MARCH 13, 1997:

The Fight Over ‘Broadway Brawler’

Bruce Willis’ latest film is shut down 20 days into production after director Lee Grant and others are let go.

Scrapping a big star production once filming has begun and millions of dollars are already on the line is rare in Hollywood.

I don’t know if this had ever been done before—the star walking out on a picture three weeks into an eight-week shoot. Eighteen million dollars of a $28-million budget already spent. Then firing the producer and director and taking charge himself. Was he desperately insecure and unhappy and frustrated? Or was it the great news that he was offered
Armageddon
and had a three-picture deal with Disney, his future was secure again, so we were disposable? I think maybe both. I think when I walked into his dressing room, both Bruce and his agent were happy men, with a big movie in the bag, maybe, and they were both insecure about our movie—on the one hand, legitimately, not having seen a cut, but on the other hand, without reason. Well, maybe some reason I don’t know.

The little boy of about seven and the girl of nine who played Maura’s children in the film broke down and sobbed when they heard the news at lunch. There was a terrible, empty, cold fear in the pit of my stomach. It was unreal. Joey was ravaged. He wanted to kill Bruce. He’s still ravaged by it. He’d put the whole film together and now he had nothing. His big chance—the gold ring—was gone. Mary Beth remembers riding back to New York with me and my saying, “That was it, I’ll never be asked to direct a film again. It’s over, that part of my life.” I felt it very matter-of-factly. When it was happening in Wilmington it was like a nightmare—falling, falling into an empty, cold, endless black well. I was still waking up in the mornings, going through practical days, but inside I was falling and I was humiliated.