Streisand: Her Life (102 page)

After working together for two weeks, Streisand and Conroy were pleased with the results. “I’ve never seen anyone go through a total immersion in a project like she does,” he said. “It completely obsesses her and takes over her life. I mean, here is how much input I had on the script: I think Barbra actually wrote it. She certainly wrote more of it than I did. She whipped that thing into shape the way she liked it, and I just helped with the polish. She should have taken a screenwriting credit on it. I think she even tried for one, but the Writers Guild works in Byzantine ways, which I don’t understand. She certainly deserved it.”

While Streisand worked with Conroy, she also discussed her final casting choices for the film, budgeted at $25 million and now set to go before the cameras in June 1990. Earlier in the year she had scouted locations throughout the southern Atlantic seaboard, and had settled on Beaufort, South Carolina, the town Conroy had lived in as a teen and the real-life counterpart of Colleton, the fictional town where the Wingo children were raised. Set among the marshlands and inlets off the coast of South Carolina, Beaufort’s rural beauty is a bewitching blend of Spanish moss-draped trees, soft, sandy soil, and atmospheric, weather-beaten homes. Streisand considered it the perfect place to bring Conroy’s novel to life.

In addition to Nolte, Barbra surrounded herself with the finest actors, beginning with Blythe Danner as Tom’s wife, Sallie. According to Streisand, Danner exuded a “warm and homey” aura and was “easy to talk to, easy to like.” And these soothing qualities defined Sallie’s character as well.

Barbra originally considered Kate Nelligan to play Sallie, but after she spoke to the forty-year-old Canadian-born actress she changed her mind. She found Nelligan so beautiful and charismatic she immediately saw her as the young Lila Wingo. After Nelligan’s reading, Barbra changed her mind again: now she wanted Nelligan to play both the young and the older Lila in the kind of tour-de-force acting challenge Nelligan loved. “She’s the only one who could pull it off, really,” Barbra said with admiration.

For the role of Herbert Woodruff, Lowenstein’s tyrannical husband, Streisand chose Jeroen Krabbé, whose work in
Crossing Delancey
caused Streisand to shout “That’s the guy.” In the small but important role of Savannah, Barbra chose Melinda Dillon, and she fin
ally pic
ked the comedian George Carlin to play Savannah’s gay Greenwich Village neighbor, Eddie.

Barbra has always said and done exactly as she felt, of course, and the casting of Bernard, Lowenstein’s hostile teenage son, is an example. The mother-son dynamic in
The Prince of Tides
, so evident in Lila and Tom’s volatile relationship, is also explored in the subplot involving Susan and Bernard. Angry, disillusioned, and lonely, Bernard feels trapped by the well-mapped plan his parents have laid out for his life. His father expects him to play the violin, but Bernard wants to play varsity football as well. With Tom as his coach, he accomplishes his goal—and in the process breaks free from his parents’ smothering concern.

When Jason Gould read the script, he very much wanted to play Bernard. He had already made tentative forays into acting, totally independent of his mother, and had appeared in small roles in several films and television shows. Now he did something he had never done before: he asked Barbra to give him the part. At first, fearful of being criticized for nepotism, she said no: “I resisted hiring him, even though he read the [part] at a reading we had the first time we finished the script, and he was absolutely brilliant. But I thought he was too old for the part [Jason was twenty-four, Bernard seventeen]. And I was concerned about the complexities of mother-son direction and so forth.”

Those complexities, indeed, were the main reason Barbra was initially so reticent about casting Jason. Although she has admitted that she and Jason share many similarities, including a love of privacy and a disdain for “the glamorous side of show business,” there are also many differences between them. Barbra is ambitious; Jason far less so. According to Barbra, this part
icular
difference began at birth, when he was delivered by cesarean section. “Even though I went through labor for eight hours, he didn’t have to struggle through the birth canal.... I find that’s connected somehow. In a way, something was too easy for him. Everything he does, he’s very gifted; he’ll sit down and play you something, having never taken a lesson, make a film, draw, write a screenplay. But he’s not driven like I am.”

Barbra decided to cast Chris O’Donnell, who would soon make a strong impression with Al Pacino in
Scent of a Woman,
as Bernard. But fate, in the form of Pat Conroy, intervened on Jason’s behalf. “Barbra showed me this kid that she had cast for the role of her son, a very handsome blond kid,” Conroy said. “Of course, everyone looks wonderful in Hollywood, but I said, ‘That ain’t the kid.’ So she said, ‘I already hired him.’ I said, ‘That still ain’t him.’ And she said, ‘Look, he’s a good athlete.’ I said, ‘This kid [Bernard] is
not
a good athlete; that’s the point.’ So she sort of flipped me through other kids she’d auditioned. She finally came to this one kid. I didn’t know it was her son. But he showed a snarling, wonderful teenage quality. I said, ‘That’s the kid right there.
’”

Barbra was stunned. Then she realized that Jason fit Conroy’s description of Bernard almost exactly
. “He’s desc
ribed in the book just as Jason looks: dark curly hair, dark eyes, long legs, prominent nose and full lips like his mother,” Barbra said. Still, she wavered. “I thought he was too thin. He’s my son, I never think he eats enough, you know? And I said, ‘He’s too thin,’ and Pat said, ‘He’s thin in the book. I wrote [that] he weighs a hundred forty pounds.’ I said, ‘No, I think Jason weighs one twenty-five.’ So I called Jason, and I asked how much he weighed and he said, ‘A hundred forty pounds. Why?’ And I thought, This was meant to be.”

So O’Donnell was out and Jason was in, but Barbra still fretted about directing her son. “In real life he never wanted me to criticize him or tell him how to wear his hair. I told him as the director of the movie, you’re gonna have to accept that from me.” She also warned him how cruel Hollywood and the ever-cynical press could be. “Be willing to accept getting attacked [for this movie] because you’re my son,” she told him. “You have to be prepared for all that.” Jason assured her he could handle it.

Something Jason didn’t expect to have to handle popped up in the May
15,
1990, issue of the
Star
, a supermarket tabloid. Across the top of the front page blazed the headline, “Barbra Streisand heartsick—her only son hangs out at gay bars.” Jason, needless to say, hated this intrusion into his personal life, and Barbra was furious. “I’ve just about gotten used to the garbage they’ve been writing about me for years,” she said, “but this is a new low in rag journalism.”

It got lower. In July 1991 another tabloid, the
Globe
, ran a story, “Barbra Weeps over Gay Son’s Wedding,” which alleged that Jason had “married” the male model David Knight in an elaborate ceremony in his West Hollywood home. The report of the wedding was nonsense of course, but Jason was indeed involved with the exceptionally handsome young man, who had been featured on the cover of the
International Male
catalog and with whom Jason worked out at the Sports Connection, a West Hollywood health club. Barbra was angrier than ever about her son’s loss of privacy.

Jason’s “outing” and the pain it caused brought him and Barbra closer together. It also opened her eyes to many of the problems faced by homosexuals in today’s society. As would any mother, Barbra worried about Jason’s happiness and about his health in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. But she never condemned him for his sexuality; she told him she loved him and accepted him no matter what.

As for the tabloid’s assertion that Barbra was devastated by Jason’s homosexuality and had “refused to attend the wedding,” she retorted, “I don’t care if my son marries a chimpanzee; I would be at the wedding.”

Elliott was less accepting at first, although he did come around. “That’s [Jason’s] preference, his business,” he told Corinna Horan in the
Courier
-
Mail
.
“It’s something that’s new to me, and it’s an acutely delicate subject. But I’m more than just empathetic. Whether it has been a problem for Barbra, I don’t know. It’s really important not to be prejudiced, and both of us are devoted to him.”

P
RINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY ON
The Prince of Tides
was scheduled to begin in Beaufort in June. Months before, Barbra’s production crew had begun constructing the lavishly detailed interior sets that would capture Conroy’s evocative locales. Under the supervision of the Oscar-winning production designer Paul Sylbert, who would later complain bitterly about Streisand’s perfectionism, the interior of the Wingo family home was constructed in a local gymnasium; a dusty county warehouse became Lowenstein’s chic high-rise New York apartment, and the National Guard armory housed both Lowenstein’s wood-paneled office and Savannah’s Greenwich Village flat.

Everything was soon in place for the arrival of La Streisand. Soon the sleepy town of Beaufort, South Carolina, would be awakened from its antebellum slumber with a high-tech Hollywood jolt. As the Savannah
News-Press
put it, “Beaufort is going bonkers for Barbra.”

B
arbra’s staff scurried around Beaufort faster than a duck on a June bug, as they say in the South, in anticipation of the star’s imminent arrival. Everything had to be perfect. The white wood three-story antebellum mansion rented by Streisand for the duration of the shoot had been fitted with a white canvas backyard security screen to keep the gawkers at bay. Her Oyster Cove production office staff solicited local resumes for extra work, manned a slew of perpetually ringing phones, and orchestrated the endless details, from food to flowers, that Barbra’s film required.

For starters, no environmentally incorrect plastic plates were to be used by the caterers; long-stemmed gardenias, out of season in the South, had to be flown in from South America; fresh-cut flowers were to fill Barbra’s house daily; her rented Ford Crown Victoria station wagon and silver Cadillac Coupe De Ville needed to be kept clean; and an enclosed air-conditioned walkway that would lead from her Winnebago to the set had to be constructed. Bystanders later complained that this peculiar structure proved that Streisand didn’t want to be seen, but crew members knew the real reason: it was hot that summer in Beaufort, and Barbra didn’t want her makeup to melt.

The gossip about Barbra mushroomed as her arrival grew near. When she had flown to Beaufort in February to scout locations, the town had been charmed by her. She had dined at Plums on Bay Street, fallen in love with their “Diet Center Maintenance” turkey sandwich, then gone off the diet wagon with a scoop of Oreo coffee ice cream for dessert. She had worn little makeup, dressed unassumingly, appeared to be “shy but sweet,” and spent lots of money in antique shops throughout the county. Perhaps, the townspeople of Beaufort thought, she wasn’t as inaccessible as they had been led to believe.

When filming began on June 18, however, a very different Barbra emerged, and the message was clear: she had come to work, not socialize. The distant diva persona returned, and her popularity suffered. Streisand was unconcerned; she had a movie to direct, produce, and star in. Nick Nolte, on the other hand, quickly ingratiated himself with the people of Beaufort via his daily jogging and good ol’ boy dinners at local restaurants, but his schedule was far less demanding than Barbra’s. She simply didn’t have the time to stop and talk to hordes of tourists; the pressure on her to finish
The Prince of Tides
on schedule and within budget was intense. After all, Hollywood was watching.

C
HIEF AMONG THE
problems Barbra faced while making
The Prince of Tides
was her strained relationship with the film’s production designer, Paul Sylbert. His professional association with Barbra was respectful at best, argumentative and threatening at worst. Disagreements between these two strongly opinionated artists began soon after Streisand arrived in South Carolina. After inspecting his black-and-white set for Dr. Lowenstein’s New York apartment, Streisand reportedly told him to change it. Sylbert, who argued that Lowenstein’s home should reflect a sophisticated European coldness, refused. Tempers flared. Sylbert allegedly threatened to walk off the picture and take his art department with him. Streisand stewed, and fin
ally co
mpromised.

Later, Barbra admitted that Sylbert had been right, but she didn’t like him any better for it. Their relationship would end with Sylbert accusing Barbra of bad-mouthing him all over Hollywood. Barbra has never commented on the feud specifically, although she later told journalist Michael Shnayerson, “They said I fire people and it hasn’t been true. But they’re going to say that about you anyway because you’re at the top of the heap, so you might as well do what you have to do. The craft takes so much out of you that it’s very important for the soul, the spirit, the body, to be surrounded by a loving support system. I didn’t have that on
Prince of Tides
.
The grips, the prop people, the gaffers, were wonderfully supportive, but there was a handful of ‘boy’s-clubbers’ who were not, and it made my job extra difficult. I want to work with people who say, ‘Yes, it can be done.’ And I won’t be afraid to fire people who constantly say ‘It can’t.
’”

D
ESPITE THE LOCAL
griping about Barbra’s aloofness, the filming was a boon to Beaufort’s economy. “Although exact figures are not yet available,” wrote Kay Graves in the Savannah
News-Press
,
“Beaufort conservatively expects to take in from $2 million to $4 million by the time the filmmakers leave town August 13.” The money that poured into the Beaufort coffers represented every expenditure imaginable: office supplies, hotel room rentals, groceries, restaurant meals, flowers, department store purchases.

One story that made the locals see red ran in the Savannah
News-Press
:
“According to at least one source, Madame Director telephoned the nearby Marine Corps Air Station and asked that the field’s jet-flight pattern be changed to accommodate her ‘quiet on the set’ requirements. No dice, said the Marines.” The Who-does-she-think-she-is? sniping grew stronger every day.

Perhaps the final insult came from Beaufort police officer B. R. Anderson, who was hired to patrol the sets daily.
“
Barbra’s rude,” he said in blunt southern-macho fashion. “I think she owes her fans more than she gives them.” As for Barbra’s fashion sense while directing—she usually wore comfortable but frumpy
shmattehs
—Anderson said. “She reminds me of that Carol Burnett character, the cleaning lady.”

B
ARBRA HAD FAR
more serious issues to deal with. Her mother, now eighty-two, underwent heart bypass surgery in Los Angeles three weeks after the filming began, and Barbra was suddenly faced with the sobering issue of her mother’s mortality. “When I was faced with the potential loss of my mother, the movie became much easier,” she said. “It lost its importance. It took the proper place—it’s much more secondary to life. That’s what
The Prince of Tides
is about in a way—learning to appreciate your mother.”

Although Streisand felt that
The Prince of Tides
explored the damaging emotional ramifications of being “programmed as children by our parents,” she came to realize that as far as her own mother was concerned, “I saw she did the best she could, you know? It’s just another generation. And she obviously caused me to be who I am today. Because I was only trying to prove to my mother that I was something. That I could make it.”

After Diana recovered, Barbra said, “I remember feeling, once
my
mother survived her operation, that this was all such a gift. I mean, the movie was only a movie, but how lucky I was to have this opportunity to have my mother still alive, that that was the important thing—
life
.” In fact, according to Streisand, her mother played a pivotal role in her desire to become a director. “Being a director is probably the best job for me because I was a kid who always told her mother what to do. It’s the way I was brought up; my mother gave me so much power.”

T
HE ACTORS IN
The Prince of Tides
found Barbra to be a sensitive, calm, and brilliantly observant director. Throughout the entire production, she placed the other actors first; her own performance became nearly an afterthought. “You see,” she explained, “when I direct and produce a movie, the actress comes last... in other words, I serve the film first. So for this one, I filmed all my scenes last.... I don’t ever cater to the actress.”

Nick Nolte felt that Streisand’s musical sense helped make her a better director. “Having been an actress, she knows the problems of the actor. She also thinks in rhythms, musically, because of the music, so she’s very tuned in to sound, and that translates into scenes, how they rhythmically should play.”

Barbra often felt awkward during her love scenes with Nolte. “When we were doing the love scenes at first,” he remembered, “they
would ju
st get hot, just start to r
eally work, and she’d cut! The actress would jump and say, ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ and the actress wou
ld order the director to cut. And I would say, ‘Barbra, why are you cutting it? It’s just getting good.’ And she’d say, ‘Well...’ and get flustered. Then she saw the dailies, and she said, ‘If I cut the camera any time when it’s really going good, don’t let me do that.” Nolte was pleased to comply with her request.