Bette Midler: Playing to Win

Q: If you're dying of some disease and you want to get into laughter therapy, what films would you request to see?

A: That's a great question. Laughter therapy! Well, I'd have to say The Producers would be first. God, so many pictures, so little time. I thought The Gold Rush was hysterical. And ... well, I can't say it in the same breath, it's terrible ... but I thought Parenthood was funny. I feel like a jerk putting it in the same breath as the other two, but I love to laugh. Any Woody Allen picture. Oh, wait a second, Carry on Nurse, Carry on Cleo. The Man in the Ice Cream Suit. No, that's not that funny.

The Lavender Hill Mob. Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Those Sophia Loren/Marcello Mastroianni movies. Bread and Chocolate. Great picture. Pedro Almodovar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Swept Away. Any Peter Sellers. All of Laurel and Hardy. I used to correspond with Stan Laurel--or I thought I was, I probably was corresponding with the studio. Boy, did I love him. And any Mae West picture--the meanest woman in show business--but My Little Chickadee more than anything else. Any W.C. Fields picture. Not any Marx Brothers pictures, just A Night at the Opera.

Q: Any of Jerry Lewis's films?

A: [Makes a face]

Q: How would you describe that face?

A: No, I can't say that because he sent me a lovely letter. I liked The Nutty Professor. I don't think I'd put it on my Top 10 list.

Q: Any Preston Sturges films?

A: Love Preston Sturges, thank you for reminding me. The Lady Eve. The Palm Beach Story. The Great McGinty. I finally saw that. The scripts are much better than the pictures, the scripts are sensational. What else? Oh, George Cukor's The Women. And Auntie Mame--right under The Producers. I thought Auntie Mame was one of the funniest movies I ever saw.

Q: Would you like to do a remake of that?

A: Nobody's ever asked me to do Auntie Mame.

Q: Well, wouldn't the sequel to Beaches be a sort of Auntie Mame 1?

A: No, because the story is like, the kid gets into drugs. I said "Iris [Rainer Dart, the author], does she have to get into drugs?" Iris said, "No, she doesn't, but..." I forget what happened to that. Oh, Garry Marshall passed.

Q: So there is a sequel ready?

A: There is a book.

Q: Would you like to do it?

A: No.

Q: What happened with Stella! It didn't do too well.

A: Nobody saw it.

Q: Why did no one see it?

A: Because the press maligned it so terribly. It was slightly old-fashioned, but it wasn't badly made. And I was really good in it. It had some problems but it wasn't worth dumping on it the way they did. Unless maybe I don't even know, maybe I haven't seen enough pictures.

Q: Stella's director came from TV. Why aren't you working with great directors? Where is your William Wyler?

A: First of all, there are no more William Wylers. That's for starters. Do you know where I can find one? If you could find me one I would hire him. I went to Billy Wilder and asked him to work with me and he wouldn't do it. So why do I work with the B-level? I work with the people who ask me. I work with the people who the studio will pay for. You have to realize that with Stella, Jeffrey Katzenberg bought that for me, and he paid an arm and a leg for it, because he really believed in it. He felt that maybe we were on to something new with Beaches, and that maybe people wanted to see something slightly more sentimental than the usual fare. He paid a lot of money for that script, but he couldn't get anybody to direct it. Nobody would touch it. And I thought it was a pretty good script.

So John Erman stepped forward and said he'd direct it. And by that time Jeffrey was already into it for a lot of money and he had to make the picture. So he made the picture. And he had to eat it. Which is too bad. There were a lot of mistakes made, but I'd like to think that after 20 years I wouldn't live or die on one script. But it broke my heart when I was turning through Premiere magazine and saw "A must to avoid," after Stella. I was really shocked.

Q: How difficult is it to get material?

A: Two words: Im Possible. Very, very hard. A struggle of life and death. A bore. Especially soul destroying. Wearying beyond belief. I mean, we leave no stone unturned. And yet even when you come up with something you believe in, it's so hard to convince people that it's worthwhile, that it's worth making. Even though they think, hey, she's good, she's got a string of hits behind her, she knows what she's doing-- they don't have any faith, they don't want to take that chance.

Q: What about your interest in doing Lotte Lenya's story?

A: That is a very dark story, and very interesting. They [Lenya and Kurt Weill] had an open marriage and she was his muse, in a way. He died and she made it her life's work to keep his music from dying. She's quite a wonderful character.

Q: Lenya's life isn't exactly a commercial kind of story. Is that a problem with studios?

A: Disney passed, it wasn't their cup of tea. Then we were accepted at TriStar; we've been working on it for a number of years. My main interest at this point is towards reviving the musical form. I was brought up on musical comedy, I cut my teeth on it. It's time to renovate it somehow, bring it into the '90s and into the next century. Because it's still viable. I'm sure I could play Medea and Lady Macbeth, but if I have a contribution to make, my main interest is the musical part of it.

Q: Your latest director, Mark Rydell, said that you suffer the torments of a virtuoso and that you're troubled by the fact you're not everything you want to be.

A: That's pretty much true. I have a very good ear and a very good eye, and so I know when a false note is struck.

Q: Rydell also said you were obsessive and compulsive ...

A: He called me obsessive and compulsive? I'm not obsessive or compulsive.

Q: ...about making things better.

A: Well, I do like to make things better. I don't like garbage. And there's so much junk. And all the standards keep getting lower and lower. Finally people won't recognize anything beautiful when they see it, because they won't even know what it is.

Q: Let me ask you about working with two funny women-- Lily Tomlin in Big Business and Shelley Long in Outrageous Fortune.

A: Well, Lily is really a perfectionist. I kept saying, "Lily, this is the Midler School of Mugging, you just have to mug your way through this. Lil, it's very light, look, I'm singing with a cow! How deadly can it be?" But she just wouldn't buy it. I couldn't talk her into it. She really struggled with that material, she was so determined to get her message across. Her heart was in the right place, she wanted to make it better. But sometimes people don't have any patience for better, they just want to get it done. That picture typifies that, believe it or not.

Q: And Shelley Long?

A: I didn't really get along very well with her. I was pregnant at the time. It was very hot, I was fainting, it was just unpleasant. She lets a lot of things get in her way. But I can't fault her performance; she's a wonderful actress.

Q: Let me ask you about Madonna ...

A: I can't talk about Madonna. I have nothing to say about Madonna. I have no opinion about Madonna. I certainly couldn't put her in the vast cosmic picture.

Q: Why can't you talk about her?

A: Because I don't want to get in the middle of that. I can't say anything without sounding like a jerk. You can't talk the truth, and I don't want to lie. My views are my own, I don't want to slander the girl. She works hard. It's nobody's business what I think of Madonna. I have no feelings about her one way or another.

Q: Let's talk about your marriage, then.

A: My marriage? This is for Movieline, for chrissakes!

Q: Has your husband ever shocked you?

A: I was shocked when I saw tapes of his performances. I was pretty stunned. But in real life, now, he's at film school, at AFI, directing.

Q: Have you ever shocked him?

A: I think everything about me shocks my husband. [Laughs] Everything. I get real fat sometimes, and that always stuns him.

A: Did what Geraldo Rivera say about you in his book anger your husband?

A: No, he wasn't pissed at all. He was the one who said, "Well, finally, someone said you had some sex appeal." He thought it was great.

Q: So it didn't bother you at all?

A: It was completely appalling, but I wasn't upset by it. I thought it was a joke. I was surprised, but who even cares what he thinks or does? You know, 21 years ago, who can even remember? I remember how I met him, though. He was so smarmy.

Q: One last question about your marriage: You're in your mid-forties now; you're not thinking of having another baby, are you?

A: I'm not? Of course I am. It's very hard, but we're trying to have another kid, yeah. I'm not doing anything with a dish, like insemination and all that stuff. But we still think about having our baseball team.

Q: Since we're talking about children, one final question-- about your own childhood. When you were growing up, did you ever steal anything?

A: Makeup.

Q: Why did you take makeup?

A: I had no money. I had absolutely nothing. I got a quarter a week for allowance. What are you going to do with a quarter a week? So, my girlfriend said, "This is what I do." So I said I'd do it with her. But I didn't really like it. It was too terrifying. It hurt my nerves. I stopped, and I've never stolen anything since. I would never, ever think of it. After my girlfriend and I took this makeup--lipsticks and hair dye--from the mall, we were on our way home with our little bags. It was pouring rain, we were in the middle of a hurricane, and my girlfriend and I got down on our knees and said, "God, if you don't kill us in this hurricane we swear we will never do this again." We didn't die, and we never did it again. I keep my vows.

Lawrence Grobel interviewed Patrick Swayze for our November cover story.

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