Mark Rydell vs. The 800 Pound Gorillas

Rydell recalls the film's other star, Katharine Hepburn, "baking cookies for people and being very deferential to Henry and to me," but he confirms that she could also live up to her reputation as a man-eater. In preproduction, Hepburn had happily gone along with Rydell and costume designer Dorothy Jeakins in the choice of a lived-in sweaters/pants look that seemed right for her role as a wise, devoted New England ex-faculty wife. Then, on the first day of shooting--a simple scene involving Hepburn and Fonda getting out of their car at their New Hampshire summer home--Hepburn showed another side altogether. Rydell recalls the moment when he was advised by Jeakins that he'd better go and take a look at what Hepburn was wearing: "I go to where she and Hank are chatting, having coffee, and are about to climb into the car for the shot. There she is in a suede Eisenhower jacket and slacks, a black silk shirt and suede fedora, looking like Coco Chanel. I said, 'Kate, what's this?' And she said"Rydell offers a swell Hepburn imitation'"It'll be wonderful.' And I went: 'I don't think it's right.'" While the crew looked on, Rydell and Hepburn waltzed around the issue until, the director says, "I announced: 'Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to take a 10-minute break while Miss Hepburn changes her wardrobe.' It was another of those moments: Win or take a bus home. Tears welled in her eyes. She stormed off the set.

Hank (Fonda) raised his eyebrow and I said, 'But it's wrong,' and he said, 'I know, but let's hope she comes back.' Five minutes later, she returned in the appropriate wardrobe. And it was months before she tested me again."

Hepburn's next demand on the shoot came when she insisted that a scene be rewritten so that her character, not the grandson played by Doug McKeon, extinguished a kitchen fire accidentally started by semi-senile Henry Fonda. "I explained to her how it was a very significant story point because of Henry's character's being old and not realizing the danger he's causing and how it marks a turning point for the young boy. But I really had to fight her because she damn well wanted to put out the fire in her house and didn't give much of a damn about the boy. You have to do that with Kate or she'll swallow you for breakfast."

On Golden Pond went on to win three Oscars out of 10 nominations, including both Best Actress and Best Actor. This showy success caused more media interest than usual in Rydell's next outing, The River. Rydell says he "poured his heart into making" the picture. In casting the male lead, Rydell says he initially just couldn't see Mel Gibson, who was anxious to do the film. Though Gibson was the hottest property in town, he hadn't yet played an American on-screen, and, Rydell was, he says, that close to landing either Paul Newman or Robert De Niro for the part of the hemmed-in Tennessee farmer. Gibson was nonplussed by such news. "Mel was very persistent," Rydell recalls, "asking me to promise that I wouldn't cast it until he'd finished making The Bounty. I said, in essence, that I wouldn't, but I thought to myself that if I had to cast it, I would. I was just trying to be courteous to him. Well, Mel made a special trip to Los Angeles, and showed up at my house. I knew he'd worked very hard on the rural accent with a tutor in London, so I figured I'd play a trick on him. Instead of letting him read the scenes he'd rehearsed from the script, I gave him a copy of Newsweek and said, 'Read from it.' Being a musician, my ear is reasonably accurate. He knocked me flat. He had slaved to do that, and I like that kind of commitment. I cast him on the spot."

And here was a case where a movie star with 800-pound-gorilla status not only didn't throw his weight around, he was eager and willing--an 800-pound panda, if you will. Gibson's co-star, Sissy Spacek, proved to be a like soul, Rydell recalls. "Mel and Sissy were extremely nervous about playing a highly sensitive, startlingly intimate love scene about his being impotent when he tries to make love to her, and her subsequently getting him to confess how awful he feels about being a scab at a steel mill. We rehearsed it alone," Rydell says, "on five consecutive afternoons in a little room away from the set, until they were comfortable with each other and with the nudity. They were wonderful about overcoming their natural embarrassment. In fact, they were the least difficult actors imaginable. Sissy is a hymn to powerful, sensitive, selfless acting. And Mel is equally determined."

Yet a movie that seemed to be packed with so many of the right credentials just didn't jell. "It's awful when a picture that you love is not loved by others," says Rydell, heaving a sigh. "There's a mentality in Los Angeles that what's successful automatically makes you hot, valued--whether that has to do with your gift or not."

Between the anticlimax of The River and the anticipation of For the Boys, Rydell's name was briefly associated with several other projects, notably Deceived, subsequently directed by Damian Harris. Somehow, the project--a woman in jeopardy chiller--didn't strike Rydell at first glance as having what he calls "the resonance" he looks for in material. But hasn't he ever felt inclined to just make a workable suspense thriller without all that much on its mind? "If I could do that, I would," he says, grinning.

"I try to seduce myself. Often. I long for the ability to accept a picture and say, you know,"he makes his voice weaselly like Pee-wee Herman's'"Oh, well, this doesn't smell so bad and it's got so-and-so in it and there's lots of money involved, maybe I can fix it.' I always wind up saying, 'I'm terribly sorry. I can't cut it.' I always try to make a picture that's worth it. If I can't sink a pipeline into my unconscious about material, then forget it."

No telling where Rydell will next "sink his pipeline," but he and Midler have been talking Lenya, her long-cherished project from a script by Becky Johnston (The Prince of Tides), about the tangled destinies of actress/singer Lotte Lenya and composer Kurt Weill. "If it didn't cost $100 million," he says, alluding to the screenplay's scenes of Nazis sweeping into Germany and of Lenya and Weill making theatrical history in Berlin and Manhattan, "now there's a project worth spending two years of your life on." Rydell's ambitions seem to be goading him to work again with tumultuous actors, but also to deal in drama set against a grand tapestry. "I like that people think of me as effective with actors," he says, "but I'm also not ashamed of any of my movies visually. I think they're very sophisticated. Although one would like to be thought of more as an original, a courageous man of vision, like Bertolucci."

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Ross Hunter for our September issue.

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