An afternoon of tantalizing fashion and frank talk with the star of Whore, director Ken Russell's antidote to Pretty Woman.
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WHORE-ING AROUND WITH THERESA RUSSELL
Theresa Russell is an enigma. My friend Steve unwittingly confirmed this for me when I asked if he knew who she was. His eyes lit up instantly. "Oh yeah. Oh, sure, that incredibly erotic actress."
What did he know about her, I asked. "Umm... Southern California beauty, but with something else, something strange...Great pout. Great hair. Great body. I saw her take off her clothes in that one film..." I pressed him. Which film? But Steve couldn't name that or any Theresa Russell film. "How about Bad Timing?" I asked, knowing that no one who actually saw that twisted movie would forget it. Steve shook his head. "Insignificance?" No. "Track 29?" No. "Black Widow?" "Oh--yeah," Steve said. "The Debra Winger cop film." Indeed, that Debra Winger cop film, in which Russell played a serial murderess who feels really bad about every husband she knocks off, is the closest she's come to a commercial break-through. "Theresa's married to that sixty-something eccentric British filmmaker," I hinted broadly to Steve. Perhaps too broadly. "Of course," he smiled. "Ken Russell." "No, the other sixty something eccentric British filmmaker. Nic Roeg. But she just made a film with Ken Russell. About a prostitute." "Pretty Woman?." Steve ventured. "Was she in that?"
The new Russell film (make that Ken or Theresa) is called Whore, and the title's not the only thing about it that's diametrically opposed to the prettiness of Pretty Woman. There are so many people who won't like this film. It's the grim flip side to Pretty Woman's romantic fantasy, a look at the sordid realities of a prostitute's life, and it's meant to shock in fine Ken Russell tradition. It revels in situations and language that would make the Diceman blush. Theresa likes that about it. "I think the film should be shown to the same eighth graders who are seeing Pretty Woman three or four times," she says. "Because in some ways Pretty Woman glamorized that life. Richard Gere is not going to pick you up in his Ferrari on Hollywood Boulevard. Whore is the non-fairy tale version of the same story. It says, 'This is not a wise career move.' "
Theresa's right, of course. After I saw Whore, I went home feeling guilty about being a white male, or a male, period--which is a politically correct if impractical sentiment. I switched on the TV in time to catch an insipid teen comedy called "Beverly Hills 90210," in which rich girls contemplated turning tricks up on the Boulevard--so they could meet Richard Gere. I began to ponder Ken Russell's shock tactics in Whore. Twice in this film, men vomit in the general direction of Theresa's character. Once would just be Ken Russell excess. Twice-- that's him saying something heavy. He must mean that men are loathsome, sorry creatures. Men are pigs. Yes. So Theresa Russell is saving teen girls from their own worst instincts (exactly the ones exploited by Hollywood men), while Julia Roberts is getting Oscar nominations.
I want to understand Theresa Russell better. In fact, after watching so many of her remarkable films, I'd settle for understanding her at all. But we're sitting in the dressing room of the photographer's studio between shots, and all I can think is, I wonder which outfit Theresa will put on next? I reach out to touch the fabric of a dress hanging on a rack. I hope she doesn't notice. She's smoking cigarettes, which are perhaps responsible for her throaty, Bacall-like voice, and waiting for me to ask a coherent question. I contemplate talking about her past. I read that when she was a teenager she lived with a psychiatrist. What does this tell us? But she doesn't think much of dredging up ancient history. "Who the hell should care?" she wonders with a smile. "I mean, I prefer not to have to do interviews at all. My answers about the past are going to be the same. 'Read the other interviews.' That's what I feel like saying. But I like to read about people. So I understand that perverse curiosity."
I believe that she does. That's why my face is red. So I ask her instead how she got involved with Whore. "The script unnerved me," Russell says. "But that was part of the reason that I couldn't not do it. I turned it down once, but then I thought, 'I won't be able to live with myself.' Ultimately, when I'm afraid of something, I have to go and do it." And you have to imagine that an actress so in tune with Nic Roeg that she married him and stars in his films on a regular basis can't be afraid of much. Russell's ongoing search for films that scare her enough to excite her is one reason she ends up making films in which she gets to do things-- not just play the love interest of the hero. "I'm not interested in being the appendage of the main male actor," she says. "How fucking boring. So I turn those parts down right away, and they tend to be about 90 percent of the scripts I get."
Russell has taken center stage in all five films she's done for Roeg--films as disturbing and intriguing as they are unknown to the public. Where else would she be able to climb that far out on the edge--by herself? "I find that area mysterious and fascinating," Russell tells me. "The darker side of the psyche and the libido." I ask her about Physical Evidence, a bad Burt Reynolds cop movie in which she seemed (to me anyway) ill-at-ease in the guise of a strait-laced district attorney. "Everyone was doing a different film on that one," she says with a laugh. "I knew that the second week into it." When Physical Evidence, along with the Sondra Locke-directed cop thriller Impulse--films which had commercial potential--bombed at the box office, Russell took herself out to the edge again, and into the waiting arms of Ken Russell.
In Whore, Russell is onscreen almost the entire film, talking matter-of-factly to the camera as she goes about turning tricks, running from her psychotic pimp, getting gang-raped by a van full of teenagers. "It's probably the most unerotic film Ken's ever done," Russell correctly notes (although it can probably be said that if Ken Russell's your idea of eroticism, you're in trouble to begin with). For her part, Russell, whose angelic features and svelte body are a matter of cinematic record, allows herself to be shot as unglamorously as possible--unusually hefty for this outing, Russell crams her character Liz into leather mini-skirts a couple of sizes too small, and pours on the tacky makeup (yellow eye-liner for starters). In one remarkable shot, she sports a chain-link bondage outfit, and Ken Russell's camera trails her up a flight of stairs, nailing her from the worst possible angle. Watching (it's hard not to), I was embarrassed for Theresa Russell for a second, until I noticed the half-smile on her face. She knows what the outfit looks like, after all--she strapped it on. The smile belongs to Liz (she's heading up the steps to flog a sexy grandpa in his bathroom, and she gets a kick out of his still-viable kinkiness) but I think it's Russell's too. Russell says she and the director came to terms early on about the level of exploitation in the film, and that he didn't go too far--at least not in her book.
Theresa Russell's persona says loud and clear that it's a fine thing to have a strong sexual identity on screen. Hollywood, predictably, can't quite fathom this, and is content to offer her one disturbed sex kitten role after another. If Hollywood doesn't understand Russell, it doesn't understand sex any better and--I've got to be honest, it's no simple thing to sit here and talk about all this with her. I feel the way the Marilyn Monroe character Theresa played in Insignificance felt as she discussed the Theory of Relativity with Einstein-- out of my league, and yet strangely confident. But we were speaking of sex, and the movies: "It's ridiculous," says Russell. "There's the obligatory sex scene in a film, and the real fashionable position is the gal on top. Is that the only way people fuck these days? We must be doing something wrong if I'm not on top the whole time." Russell's on top in one scene in Whore. Except she's facing the other way. And she's got most of her clothes on. She and the guy are in the back seat of a car, in a parking garage. She's mouthing memorized lines from a porno film, and smoking a cigarette. And the guy dies after he comes. And then her pimp steals his wallet. So much for Hollywood romance.
"I guess Ken is saying that there's a little bit of whore in all of us," says Theresa. "Not necessarily selling your body--maybe your soul." One thing is certain about Theresa Russell. She hasn't sold her soul to the movies. She would no doubt be happy with a mega-hit film, but she doesn't exactly exhaust herself with efforts to land one (or maybe she's not quite certain how it's done). Her competition for lead roles includes the likes of Kathleen Turner, whom Russell resembles, yet by spending much of her time at home in London, Russell can hardly expect to maintain a high-visibility profile. "By the time things get down to where I am," she says, "there's not a lot to choose from in the Hollywood mainstream. Also, I don't really give a shit that much. I try to do both sides of the coin-- artistic and Hollywood--but it's always hit and miss anyway." Russell's next film is a good example of her balancing act. In director Steve Soderbergh's Kafka, she stars opposite Jeremy Irons as "a very enigmatic woman." Because it's the follow-up to Soderbergh's hit sex, lies, and videotape, the film will garner plenty of attention, but it's hardly mainstream fare.
The recent success of films like Ghost and Pretty Woman is a factor in the slow re-emergence of more women-centered projects coming out of the big studios, which Russell hopes will lead to better projects for all actresses. "In the '30s and '40s, the studios backed their female stars. With all this liberation, you'd think they still would. If today's studios put their machine behind creating female vehicles, then the people would go see them. I guarantee it. After all, 50 percent of the population is women--and men are fascinated with women." Even the enigmatic ones. Especially the enigmatic ones.
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Joshua Mooney is the Associate Editor of Movieline.