My Happy Days in Hollywood (38 page)

When we went back to film in Los Angeles, Kate was more comfortable and Goldie even came to visit the set. Mother and daughter took a picture together, and it was such a treat to see Kate introducing Goldie to the other members of our cast and crew. Like Goldie, Kate is smart and funny without being at all whiny or diva-like. Goldie doesn’t like it when people swear. So on
Overboard
we had a Goldie Box on the set, and whenever someone cursed they had to put a dollar in the box. Kate isn’t that keen on swearing either. So on
Raising Helen
we decided to introduce a similar box. Instead of calling it a Kate Box, though, we called it a Goldie Box as a tribute to Kate’s mom. When the Goldie Box got too full, we used the money to buy pizza for the cast and crew.

I like to find out as much as I can about the actors I direct because it helps me connect with them. I found out that John Corbett was from West Virginia, and that his dad had been a rancher. I knew his father didn’t know much about Hollywood, so I sat down and wrote him a letter, not a text. I am a big fan of writing and receiving nice letters. In my home I have files of nice letters people have sent me over the years. I’ve learned that one of the ways you reach out to stars is to be nice to their parents, especially if they are far removed from Hollywood and don’t know what’s going on day to day with their adult children. These days I’m usually the same age as or older than my actor’s parents, so it’s a good connection to
make. I told John’s dad what an excellent job his son was doing in my movie. It was a way to reach out to John and show how much I appreciated his work.

Many stars don’t like the paparazzi that swirl around movie sets, but Kate loves them. She was nice to them and looked forward to seeing them each day when she arrived. Kate has spent her whole life watching her mom and partner, Kurt Russell, walk down the red carpet, and now it is her turn and she enjoys it. She likes being famous. She never yells at the press but rather waves hello and courts their lenses. While we were shooting
Raising Helen
, Kate was married to The Black Crowes front man Chris Robinson. He visited the set a lot. One week Kate got sick and I noticed that she appeared to be gaining a little weight. I remember thinking that if she was sick she should be losing weight and not gaining weight. What I didn’t know at the time was that she was pregnant with her son Ryder. It was so early in the pregnancy that very few people knew about it.

The three kids on the set were great to work with. Smart-as-a-whip six-year-old Abbie knew everyone’s lines. And if Abbie ever forgot a line, her brother, Spencer, would jump in to protect her. He liked to play football with my son, Scott, while Abbie took little catnaps in her trailer. Kate was great with the children, and I thought some of the best scenes were between Kate and Hayden, who had to tackle the role of a difficult teenager. Abbie went on to get an Oscar nomination for
Little Miss Sunshine
, and I tapped her again to be in
New Year’s Eve
.

The funny thing about directing kids is that although they are professional most of the time, sometimes they start behaving like real kids. Hayden had a few days acting like a difficult teenager when the cameras were not rolling. She would be late to the set, or we couldn’t find her between scenes, or she got distracted by boys. One day I had to sit down with her and talk about her behavior. “You have been given a gift and you are a very good actress,” I said. “I would hate for you not to have a career because you are rebelling just to rebel.” I think I got through to her, because for the rest of the movie she was on target, even during a difficult scene in which she
had to kiss a twenty-six-year-old. She was only thirteen years old at the time.

There are some scenes that you think about in your mind but never have the right movie to put them in. I have always wanted to do a big scene with a Zamboni machine, which cleans ice-skating rinks. I was able to do that in
Raising Helen
with Kate and John, and it made me happy. It also made me happy to once again find a good spot to put my lucky charm, Hector Elizondo. Kate’s character loses her job at the fashion magazine and then gets a lower-paying job selling cars. Hector plays her boss at the car dealership, and their relationship on-screen is very reminiscent of Hector and Julia in
Pretty Woman
. Again Hector stepped up to the plate, making another actress shine and making me very happy.

But allergies never make me happy. I have suffered from them for my entire life. On
Raising Helen
I had a particularly bad nose, so I started using a lot of Flonase nasal spray.

One day I was using it and one of the producers noticed. “I was in Cuba once and Castro leaned over to me and said one word: Flonase,” said the producer.

That is where I learned that Fidel Castro and I both have bad noses and a love of Flonase. On nearly every movie I make I get a severe cold and have to carry a box of Kleenex as well as my shooting script under my arm.

Another thing I struggled with on this movie was my hip, which was starting to fail after years of playing sports. I knew that I would need a hip replacement, but in the meantime I learned to use a cane. One day we were shooting a very emotional scene, and in the middle of our take an ambulance drove by with its siren blaring. The scene was ruined. I was so frustrated that I threw my cane into the air and it hit one of the teamsters who was standing near me. The cane startled him but didn’t hurt him. The next day all the teamsters came to work wearing helmets to make fun of me. It just went to show that on-set pranks were things I not only gave but also received.

I wanted
Raising Helen
to be a salute to single mothers everywhere. Raising kids is hard. Raising kids on your own is even more
difficult. We made a movie that entertained people and spread that message, but unfortunately it didn’t find its primary audience until it was released on DVD, a year later. Maybe most of the single mothers of the world are too busy to go out to the movies so they wait for the DVD to come out. I have always been very supportive of my movies when they come out on DVD. I believe it’s part of the whole package: You do publicity when the movie comes out in the theaters, and then you make the time to do more publicity when the DVD is released. Some directors don’t see the point of this extra work. But I put in the hours to add new material in order to make the DVDs more interesting. We now do Blu-Ray.

Raising Helen
was a sweet romantic comedy that allowed me to work with a great cast. It was never going to be the kind of picture that made big money or took home prizes, but it would turn out to make people smile, and I like making audiences smile. At the same time I was continuing to build my reputation as a “woman’s director,” and that made sense since I was never any good at making movies with explosions and guns. What I like best is making movies that parents and children can go to together. When the script for
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
came across my desk, I was eager to do it but still paused. I had never done sequels or movies with Roman numerals in their titles. However, there is an exception to every rule. Who would turn down the chance to direct Julie Andrews and Anne Hathaway in a second movie? Certainly not me. That’s why I did it.

Jane Rules and Lindsay Misbehaves

I
N MARCH 2004
, I had finished directing both
Raising Helen
and
Princess Diaries 2
, and after that I didn’t direct another movie for two years. It was harder to find financing for movies, and I was getting older. I had my hip replaced, and in a rare move for a medical doctor, mine told me the truth: He said I would be back pitching softball twelve weeks after my surgery, and he was absolutely correct. My wife, the nurse, did a stellar job at helping me recover. I was getting more involved in my Falcon Theatre, too. I liked the pace of play rehearsals and going to the theater to greet audience members as they arrived. I liked saying, “Hi, I’m Garry. Welcome to the Falcon.” I thought about movies, but the scripts coming across my desk weren’t that intriguing. I had directed fourteen pictures already, so I wasn’t running just to direct another one. I didn’t want to do a science fiction movie. I didn’t want to do a horror movie. I liked romantic comedies, and Hollywood wasn’t rushing to green-light another small romantic comedy. So I was content to play softball and oversee my theater, while still open to reading new movie scripts.

I had read a script years before by Mark Andrus called
Georgia Rule
. Mark went on to write
As Good as It Gets
and
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
. I remember when I first read the script for
Georgia Rule
thinking that it struck a nice balance between the heavy subject of possible incest and some strong comedy moments. I also liked that it was a multigenerational film that followed the stories of a mother, daughter, and granddaughter. Flash forward years later and I heard through the grapevine that Lindsay Lohan wanted to star in
Georgia Rule
. I called Mark and talked to him about the script and the
possible casting of Lindsay. I found out that this movie was being financed by an independent film production company called Morgan Creek. One man, James Robinson, was in charge of Morgan Creek.

At this point, because I had not directed a movie in two years, part of me wondered if I would ever do so again. I went to talk to James, and after meeting with him, I was sold. The idea of dealing with one man instead of a team of studio executives appealed to me. I also liked the script, and I liked Lindsay as an actress. In the beginning James and I talked about shooting the movie in Idaho, but we found it was cheaper to use a green-screen backdrop of Idaho and shoot everything in Los Angles. If you are from Idaho, you can probably tell where we shot, but most people couldn’t tell the difference. I liked the idea of working near my home, too, so I ended up making a deal to direct the film and accepted about one third less than my usual salary. There was also another incentive to go ahead with the movie, and her name was Jane Fonda.

I had met Jane before. In a way our friendship was similar to my relationship with Candice Bergen. We knew each other, and talked politely when our paths crossed, but we had never worked together. There are many actresses I know like this. Whenever I see them at a party we say to each other, “When can we work together?” My relationship with Sally Field was like that until we finally worked together on the television series
Brothers & Sisters
. I had met Jane at political events with her then husband, Tom Hayden, and we’d talked about doing a movie together. There was a script we used to pitch around called
Mrs. California
. It took place in the 1940s and was about a beauty contest in which each housewife had to cook a meal, iron a shirt, and pack a suitcase for her husband’s business trip. Jane and I never got the funding to make that movie. So
Georgia Rule
seemed like something that had been well worth the wait.

I had known other Fondas. My daughter Lori went to school with Jane’s niece Bridget from kindergarten through twelfth grade. I never had the pleasure of meeting the great Henry Fonda, but I hung out with Bridget’s dad, Peter, at school events and even before that in the early days of Hollywood, when he ran with Dennis Hopper and Harry Dean Stanton. I wasn’t in the movie
Easy Rider
, but
I was in another movie around that time called
Psych-Out
. I played a plainclothes narcotics agent and won the role because I owned a dark suit. I got to arrest Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern.

When we started production on
Georgia Rule
, Jane and I both had new hips. We talked about what it was like to go through hip replacement surgery and rehabilitation. This is what happens when you get older in Hollywood. You schmooze about the replacing of body parts and which doctors you liked best. My hip was replaced by the same doctor who replaced James Brolin’s hip. My wife slept on a cot in the hospital room, and so did Barbra Streisand for James. While I was recovering at the hospital, James and my friend Jeff Wald, Streisand’s manager, sent me a pair of tap shoes to inspire me to get back up on my hip soon. It used to be that you met people at parties, nightclubs, or fancy restaurants. When you get older you meet them in orthopedic offices and doctors’ waiting rooms.

When we were filming
Georgia Rule
, Ted Turner came to visit Jane on the set. He was dapper and rich, just the type of man my dad wanted to be. Ted and Jane remained friends even though she’d divorced him in 2001. She liked to refer to him as her “favorite ex-husband.” The day Ted came to visit we talked about his baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, and then we gave him a good seat to watch us film a scene. Jane came over to me afterward and said that Ted was a little bored just sitting on the set, and asked if one of my assistants could take him out to lunch. I assigned someone, and they went to a nearby deli. My assistant said later he sang to her during lunch, which I thought was funny. I invited Ted to join us on the set for lunch another day, but Jane said he didn’t like craft service food. Whenever he visited, though, it put Jane in a good mood, and I liked that. Jane has had some highs and lows in her life and career, but smiling and happy is her best angle.