My Happy Days in Hollywood (30 page)

Often I try to cast relatives or people I know because during the grueling pace on a movie it is nice to see people you like and know. To get up every morning and like my job and look forward to it is
important to me. I remember the day I realized that. My friend the fast-talking writer, Sam Denoff, was working on
The Dick Van Dyke Show
, and I was writing for
The Danny Thomas Show
. We were talking one day about how much we liked going to work in the morning. He said, “Garry, that’s what life is all about.” I never forgot that. I am willing to work as hard and as long as anyone, but I have to like my job and look forward to it.

Back to the S and M island: I wanted
Exit to Eden
to have an air of authenticity as well, so I interviewed some real-life dominatrixes to cast in various scenes. My secretaries were all a-twitter the day I had my dominatrix casting call. One of the women seemed unusually bright. It’s not as if a dominatrix should be a dummy, but you don’t expect her to have a Ph.D. either. Anyway, this bright girl came into my office to read a scene, and when she got up to leave she looked a little funny.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“I need to tell you something,” she said.

“Yes?” I asked.

“I knew your mother,” she said timidly.

I was a little taken aback that my mother would have known someone in the sex trade, but it turned out the dominatrix’s mother took dance lessons from my mother. When they knew each other my mom had shown her mother and the daughter pictures of me from when I was growing up. As the daughter was leaving she said, “Your mother was very proud of you.” And that was a nice thing to hear, even from a woman who makes a living spanking men.

The premise of the movie interested me from the start. After
Beaches, Overboard
, and
Pretty Woman
, I felt a little as if I was running out of settings. So the idea of filming on a warm tropical island appealed to me. We found out we could shoot on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which also sounded terrific. The setting, however, was never really the problem. The disagreement from the start was what the movie should be about. I thought I could make a serious love story with some sexy and lighter moments. But some of the other people involved in the project felt it should be a zanier comedy. That problem grew worse when we cast Rosie O’Donnell and
Dan Aykroyd as undercover police who travel to the island. The sex story line of Dana and Paul seemed to be in constant competition against the comedy story line that Rosie and Dan were starring in. We had one movie with two strong plots and we could never reconcile that problem to create one story.

I always loved the book the film was based on, and I was thrilled to get to meet Anne Rice when we filmed in her hometown of New Orleans after the island shoot wrapped. Anne is a fascinating woman and writer. She had a child who died and suffered from grief and writer’s block for years before finding her voice again. When I met with Anne I was surprised to find that she was a tiny and soft-spoken woman. I somehow thought a woman who wrote about sex and vampires would be loud and tall instead. She read the script of
Exit to Eden
and liked it.

I wanted to stay true to her premise, but again the studio kept pushing me toward comedy because they were growing more afraid each day of having a purely erotic story line. Every time I got a note from an executive from Savoy, it told me I needed to “pump up” the comedy from Rosie and Dan. The executives seem to care less and less about the parts Dana and Paul were playing. I have to admit that seeing Rosie in a dominatrix outfit was funny, but we couldn’t build an entire movie around that. Rosie later said on her talk show that
Exit to Eden
nearly ruined her career. We became better friends after the movie was behind us. A few years later she let me come on her show to promote my movie
Runaway Bride
, even after her producers had refused to book my appearance. She said, “Garry, you should have just called me directly. We are like family.” She had worked with my sister Penny on
A League of Their Own
. Despite the fact that I knew there were problems on
Exit to Eden
during the filming, I didn’t know what to do to fix them.

Dana was a brave and fearless actress when it came to shooting erotic scenes. Another actress might have been reluctant or anxious, but Dana was the opposite. She was wonderful to work with and had no problem doing as little or as much nudity as I thought suited the scene. We became friends during the movie and talked a
lot about our families and dreams. Dana had found that, as is true for so many of the beautiful stars, dating was hard. Traveling to different television and movie locations was a way of life for Dana but not a very good way to keep a boyfriend. But by the time we did our movie together, she had made peace with the fact that acting would come first for a while and boyfriends would need to come second. This is a choice many actresses are afraid to make.

The only time we didn’t get along was when she fooled me about her experience with horses. I wanted to film a scene in which Dana rode into the entrance of the island on a horse—like the world’s sexiest army general reviewing the troops. I didn’t think the horseback riding was a problem because I had seen Dana in the western movie
Tombstone
, in which she rode a horse. But when we started shooting our movie and I pitched the scene to her, she looked worried.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t ride horses,” she said.

“But I saw that movie
Tombstone
. It was a western. Kurt Russell. Val Kilmer. You. Everyone rode a horse, and you even rode sidesaddle,” I said.

“The crew made me a fake leg,” she said.

They had built her a fake leg because she was not comfortable riding a horse sidesaddle. Luckily, one of my
Exit to Eden
actresses, Stephanie Niznik, a pretty blonde actress, was an excellent rider. She worked with Dana to help her feel more comfortable. At one point I put the two of them on the horse together, and if you look closely you can see Stephanie riding the horse triumphantly in while Dana has her arms around Stephanie’s waist, holding on for dear life.

Paul Mercurio was also excited to try his best. He made up for not bringing the star power of the other actors by being more than amiable. He and his wife were former ballet dancers, and they brought their children from Australia to live with us on the island during the shoot. Life on the set was not stressful for them because they lived a bit like gypsies in Australia, too, always moving from one town to the next. His hobby was brewing beer, and he brought in many different beers for me to try.

Shooting on Lanai was a unique experience for all of us. Only Dan Aykroyd kept a little to himself. The rest of the cast and crew would hang out at night and sing songs in the hotel bar. The model-actress Iman, married to David Bowie, played a small part. Many nights Iman and Rosie O’Donnell would lead the cast in Broadway show tune sing-along sessions. Where could you see Iman and Rosie singing songs from
My Fair Lady
and
South Pacific
except on a quirky movie set in Hawaii?

One of the highlights of the editing process for me on
Exit to Eden
was the music. I got along well with the composer, a wonderful dapper Englishman named Patrick Doyle. In our first meeting I was kind of tired, so I talked shorthand. I said to him, “Put some harp shit into that scene to give it that celestial feel.” He looked at me and said, “Let me write that down. ‘Harp shit.’ ” To this day whenever I run into him he refers to my harp shit request and we share a laugh.

When the picture came out the critics were shocked that Mr.
Happy Days
could make an S and M movie. My joke was “I made a movie about S and M and the critics spanked me for it.” My experiment with something new failed miserably. Instead of a sexy farce, audiences and critics declared it a smutty flop. Some people (mostly men) told me later what they hated most about the movie was the fact that Dana’s character spanked the man she loved. After a few test screenings where the picture didn’t go over well, we took out some sex and put in more comedy.

When all was said and done, however,
Exit to Eden
didn’t turn out as I planned. One of the scenes that showcases the mix I was trying to achieve was a sex class my wife was in. A teacher walks over to Barbara, who was playing a very buttoned-up woman. The teacher tries to get her character to loosen up through erotic play. The teacher says to my wife, “Say something dirty.” My wife says, “Soot!” It was a funny scene, but unfortunately the entire movie didn’t strike that same chord.

Despite our best efforts to reconcile the plot, we got beat up by the critics for making two movies instead of one. When the film was received so badly I got a little blue, especially since it came on
the heels of
Frankie and Johnny
, a film I was so proud to be a part of. Even though
Exit to Eden
didn’t win any praise, I can say that we had a great time filming on Lanai, and the cast and crew felt like family to me. I don’t normally like to shoot so far away from my own family, but this was a movie in which people really bonded.

After I directed
Pretty Woman
everyone was rushing to hire me. After
Exit to Eden
came out nobody came rushing. In fact, some were rushing away from me. I was no longer a hot director, however, I was not entirely unhappy because I was no longer in debt. The financial security that
Pretty Woman
brought stayed with me even beyond the failure of my adventure into S and M. Yet, I still needed and wanted to work. I could be choosy but not that choosy. So when Paramount sent me a script called
Dear God
, I didn’t think too long before accepting the job. When you lose a lot of money and then earn it back, the goal remains just to keep working in case some bad financial thing ever happens again. The script for
Dear God
had no actor attached. Someone called me from the casting department to discuss some different choices.

“How about Greg Kinnear?” he said.

“Who is Greg Kinnear?” I asked.

“He starred in
Talk Soup
,” he said.

“I don’t know that either. But bring him in. I’ll meet him,” I said.

Before I started shooting
Dear God
, I went on a tour across the country to promote my book
Wake Me When It’s Funny
, a how-to book about breaking into show business. At signings people would come up and whisper things in my ear about my movies. Time and time again women would lean across the table as I was signing their books and say, “I loved
Beaches
,” and then they would lean in closer and whisper more softly so no one could hear but me and say, “I liked
Exit to Eden
, too.” That kind of comment always made me smile. At least some people understood that I was trying to achieve something different with my movie about the S and M island.

At the end of my book tour, my assistant of twenty-two years, Diane Perkins Frazen, retired. We interviewed several candidates and chose Heather Adams Hall, who worked at a law firm. Heather
was a young, pretty, very strong Irish girl. She said she was single with no kids and no plans for either. Of course, she is married now and has two terrific girls. She remains my fiercely loyal executive assistant for the past seventeen years, and now co-produces my movies, too.

Al Pacino was an intense actor to direct, but after a few weeks on the set even he was game to play along with some of my gag-reel shots.
(Courtesy of Paramount Pictures Corporation)

Reuniting with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere to shoot the film
Runaway Bride
was exciting. For years we tried to find a sequel script for
Pretty Woman II
, but nothing seemed like a good fit.
Runaway Bride
pleased all three of us.
(Photo by Ron Batzdorff, © 1999 Paramount Pictures Corporation and Touchstone Pictures)

Julie Andrews, Hector Elizondo, and Anne Hathaway were a dream cast for
Princess Diaries I
and
II
. We loved seeing Anne mature from a young girl in the first film to a true movie star in the second movie.
(Photo by Ron Batzdorff, © Disney)

Raising Helen
was my chance to work with the lovely Kate Hudson, who, as a little girl, hung out with me on the set of her mother’s film
Overboard. (Photo by Ron Batzdorff, courtesy of Holding Pictures)

Georgia Rule
brought together old Hollywood and new: Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman, and Lindsay Lohan all turned in great performances in the movie, even if some audiences found it a difficult film.
(Photo by Ron Batzdorff, courtesy of Morgan Creek Productions, Inc.)

Working with Jennifer Garner on
Valentine’s Day
was a highlight for me. Sometimes you meet an actress who you would be friends with if you were working in another business, and Jennifer is that girl. A delight.
(
Valentine’s Day
photo by Ron Batzdorff, © New Line Productions, Inc. All rights reserved)

I had just finished seven weeks of radiation treatment before I directed
New Year’s Eve
. Coming to work and getting to hug Halle Berry is an excellent post-radiation regimen.
(
New Year’s Eve
photo by Andy Schwartz, © New Line Productions, Inc. All rights reserved)

When we can, my wife and I take our children and grandchildren to Hawaii for Christmas. We take a timer photo by the elevator each trip, and we are so grateful for the time we get to spend together as a family.

Playing softball is one of the joys of my life. The fact that I can still play ball at least once a week in my seventies helps keep me balanced.

My sister Penny is one of the most talented actresses I have ever known. She has a gift for physical comedy that I think is on par with Lucille Ball.
(Courtesy of © MLC)

I have been married to Barbara Sue Wells for nearly five decades now. She makes me move into a hotel when I’m directing a movie, even when I shoot in Los Angeles. This is one of our many coping strategies and it works.