The extremely successful, supremely self-effacing Adrian Lyne talkes about L.A. disappointing decline (in alcohol consumption, that is), Anglo-American prudery, and the challenge of keeping Demi Moore from looking like a whole in his new film, Indecent Proposal.
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I can tell you right now that things don't look good. The plan is that I'm to meet director Adrian Lyne at 7:30 a.m. at Hugo's on Santa Monica boulevard. First of all, I make it a practice not to see 7:30 a.m. unless I've been up all night, which i haven't been. Second, after being up all night I've been known to gag in Hugo's, which is famous for serving pasta at breakfast. And third, at the moment of this meeting, I have a piece in print (in Movieline, no less!) calling Lyne's film 9½ Weeks "one of the most odious movies ever made." So you can see that this might be trouble.
On the up side, Lyne has made four other films (Flashdance, Foxes, Jacob's Ladder and Fatal Attraction) which I haven't, as far as I can remember, trashed in public.
I'm the only person at Hugo's when the door opens and in walks ... James Woods. Which really has nothing to do with this story, but as added color goes, it beats John Tesh. And then Adrian Lyne comes shuffling through the door. He looks like maybe he just got punched in the stomach. I mean, he sinks into the seat opposite me.
"Are you an early bird?" I ask, since no matter how he looks, he's the one who insisted on 7:30 a.m.
"No fucking way," he says, running his fingers through his long hair, looking and sounding exactly like Rod Stewart.
"Then what are we doing here now?"
"I don't know," he answers. "I thought we had to do this early because you wanted to. I hate the fucking morning."
We will both speak to Paramount about this later, I bet. In the meantime, I'm already liking Lyne more. And when he orders granola and coffee instead of spaghetti and shrimp, he's home free.
We sit contentedly in our stupors for a while, until Lyne says, "Wait a minute. Movieline magazine. Isn't that the magazine that murdered me once?"
"Not really," I say, hiding the offensive issue under my seat. "They were pretty fair ..."
"No fucking way," he insists. "I remember how mortified I was when that piece came out. Nice guy who did the story, but then it came out all fucked up. They mangled me. Oh God, what am I doing here? And someone told me recently that they said something horrible about 9½ Weeks ..."
I just give Lyne my blankest look and shrug my shoulders. I act like I have never even seen 9½ Weeks. Instead, I bring up my friend Seymour Cassel, who just finished work on Lyne's new movie, Indecent Proposal.
"I love Seymour," he says, rising to the bait. "He's the most relaxed actor I've ever worked with. He has no nerves at all. He just kind of enjoys it and has fun. Did you see In the Soup? The guy was fantastic. I knew him years ago, in the '80s, when things were fun ..."
"What's the matter, Adrian, the '90s getting you down?"
"What, you're happy? The '70s and the early '80s were great. And now ... No one drinks, no one smokes. My God, I hate it. I don't know how to cope with this. I hate those condoms, I could never make them work. I'm the only person in this town who drinks. I don't know what they do here. Ten years ago, Los Angeles was a den of iniquity. And now it's a fucking monastery. I hate it."
We sit and mope together for a few minutes, remembering the good old times.
"Okay, tell me a little about yourself." This is him talking.
"No Adrian, I think you have it wrong. I'm the interviewer. I get to ask the questions."
He sighs. "I hate talking about myself. I'd much rather find out about you."
"Well," I say. "if you take me to the editing room and let me see a little of Indecent Proposal, I'll cut the questions short."
"No, that would be impossible. It's frighteningly long. No, no, I couldn't possibly let you see it."
"Okay then," I say, "I'm going to make you tell me every last detail of your bloody boring life."
If grown men could cry, he would. "Look," he pleads, "it wouldn't be fair to show you the movie now. It just goes on and on. I'm at the point now where I hate the fucking thing. I always feel this way when we edit. It's like it's a monster that you haven't tamed yet. You don't know if it's good, if it's going to make any money. No, it's just too fucking long ..."
"Okay," I say, "we'll start with when you were making commercials in London."
Lyne begins to whimper.
"All right, we'll skip the commercials. And come to think of it, maybe we should skip your films, too ..."
"Why?" he asks, perking up. "Did you not like them?"
Well, here it is, the moment of truth. I order more coffee and head to the bathroom. When I come back, he's sitting there expectantly. And I decide, what the hell, what's the worst thing that could happen? He won't take me to the editing room.
"Okay, I'll tell you the truth. I have not been a big fan of yours. Your movies all look great. They have this sheen that makes you think you're watching something wonderful. And I've seen all of them more than once. But in the end, what's the point? They leave me feeling pissed off and cheated."
I go on. "I thought Flashdance was incredibly stupid. First of all, I don't look good in ripped sweatshirts. And then the whole dilemma of, should I be a welder or a ballerina? Welder? Ballerina?" I start slapping myself across the face, saying "welder/ballerina" like the "my sister/my daughter" thing in Chinatown.
Lyne is laughing. "Oh, I know. It was a silly little thing. But the music was good, don't you think?" He's actually waiting for an answer.
"And 9½ Weeks," I continue, "I could have killed you for. I loved that book when it first came out. I used to jerk off to it all the time..."
Lyne chokes on his coffee. "Did you say you used to jerk off to it?"
"What, Adrian, you didn't think girls did that?" I ask indignantly.
"No, of course I know that. Of course. It's just not what I expected you to say. Go on, though, this sounds promising."
"Well, I loved the book. I loved the idea that this woman-- this strong independent woman--totally gave herself over to someone else. But then you cast Mickey Rourke! Are you out of your mind? Who would want to surrender to him?"
"So," he asks, not the least bit offended, "who would you have surrendered to?"
"Let's see," I say. "Jeff Bridges. Yeah, I would totally surrender to him."
"Oh, Jeff Bridges would have been good. Yes, yes, he would have been wonderful. Well, go on, what did you think of Fatal Attraction?"
I figure I'm on a roll now, "What is it you were trying to say, exactly ... that if you have sex with someone who's not your spouse you wind up in hell? I don't buy that for a minute. And that women who like sex are predatory bitches who would boil your baby's bunny?"
"Slow down Martha. Jesus Christ."
"I guess this means you won't be taking me to the editing room."
"Do you know the story of Indecent Proposal?" he asks, trying to get us onto solid ground. "It's about this couple that are down on their luck [Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson]. They go to Vegas to see if they can make a little money. And a very wealthy man [Robert Redford] offers them a million dollars for a night with Demi. It would solve all their problems, and it's not like they haven't been with other people before they were married. It's not like they're being offered a million dollars to blow someone away. They're being offered a million dollars to make love to someone. Which, on the face of it, isn't so awful. But in this country and in England, too, if you talk to someone about that idea, some people get so outraged and so angry that you would even contemplate making a movie about this subject that you get the impression that they would find it easier to take the million dollars and shoot someone anonymously."
"I know," I say. "Some newspapers asked people if they would shoot their own pets for a million bucks, and a lot of them said yes."
Lyne laughs, although I'm not sure he sees the parallel.
"You know how prudish we English and you Americans are," he says.
"Of course I do. That's why your films have been so successful, Adrian. We get to see your characters doing all the stuff we can't."
"There's not too many genuinely sexy movies, are there?" he asks rhetorically.
I shake my head, no.
"Last Tango in Paris was sexy, at least I remember it being sexy," he says.
"BORING."
"Really?" he says. "I'm so disappointed. So what's sexy?"
"Don't Look Now," I venture.
"Oh yes," he agrees, "that cutting was fabulous."
"Is Indecent Proposal sexy?"
A frightened look appears on his face. "Yeah, I think it is. I sure hope so. It's funny, the areas that you think will be sexy ... sometimes it's the unexpected areas that are so much sexier. There's this bit in the movie where Demi comes back after her night with Redford, and she comes back with lipstick on, and Woody looks at her and takes his finger and smears the lipstick all over her face, as if to say, 'Get rid of him.' And that wound up to be really sexy. Because it was full of jealousy, which is a giant aphrodisiac. That moment of wanting to reclaim her. The problem with the movie, and it's a huge problem, is that if we don't do this right, it's like Woody is the pimp and Demi is the whore. And that's a very big problem that we had to work out. Hopefully we have. You'll see."
"When?" I ask, already gathering up my things.
"Redford is fabulous," he says, trying to distract me. "He was annoyed with me because I wanted to do so many takes, but if you gave him a hint about another way to do it, he would think of 10 more. I wasn't prepared for how inventive he was. I hope people like him. I was excited just to work with him. I swear, I was pinching myself."
"I heard that you saw everyone in town to play his part."
"I saw everyone in town for all the parts. When I'm casting, I want to see everyone. I saw Brad Pitt for quite a long time for this film. For the part Woody plays. I saw Isabelle Adjani, but it didn't work because she would have been working in another language. She's a wonderful actress, we wouldn't have known she wasn't American. But when the other actors started to move away from the script, she was thrown. In the end, this combination worked out great. They all did a great job, so if the thing fucks up, it's all my fault.
"I'm going to do Lolita next," he continues. "I think that fucking novel is brilliant."
"That's funny," I say, "because when I watched all your films, one of the notes I made was that there was this borderline pedophilia in your work..."
"Nice, Martha. Very fucking nice."
"So Lolita, how perfect."
"Borderline pedophilia, huh? And I'm supposed to show you part of my film? Am I a f*cking masochist, or what?"
I do believe the man has just invited me to the editing room.
"God, I hope you like it," he says on the ride over to Paramount. "What if you don't?"
"Well, I haven't liked the last four. Maybe five will be lucky."
"Even Jacob's Ladder?" he asks. I shrug. "That's the only one I really like," he continues. "I guess you always like the lame duck, the one all the critics hated. God, I really must be crazy to be taking you to see this."
After a while he says, "I never liked the film they made from Lolita. James Dearden [Fatal Attraction] has written a script, and the last draft I thought was very good. I'm trying to be real faithful to the novel. I want to use voice-overs and whatever it takes to get it right. Kubrick's film was ... I don't know, it's not really faithful to the book. I'm very excited about this project."
As we pull into the lot, he turns to me and says, "I'm kind of neurotic, as you can see. I'm so worried that you're not going to like the film."
"Adrian, you're beginning to annoy me."
"I'll show you the bit in the bed when they make the decision. I think that'll be good for you. This is after Redford has made the offer, and they're just tossing it back and forth. And Woody doesn't say yes, and he doesn't say no. And I think she's kind of waiting for him to say no, but he never does. And the idea is that these two people, who love each other so much, that they could handle this, pretend that it never happened, or that it happened before they were married, and they can go on with their lives. But remember, it's long, it's too fucking long, okay?"
The editor and Lyne give me the "it's too long" speech for another 10 minutes, and then Lyne shows me some notes he had made in his script. "There's this scene in Breathless ..." he begins.
"The real Breathless?"
"Yeah, where half the scene is like them talking under a sheet. Do you remember that? Well, I wanted the scene where Woody and Demi decide whether she should go with Redford to look like that. Just all this white, from the sheets, and them rolling around under it. Oh, God, just watch the thing."
And here's the amazing part: Indecent Proposal looks great. The scene with Woody and Demi in bed is funny, touching, sexy, and opens many questions about the nature of jealousy, trust and sexuality. Redford and Demi Moore look fantastic together. The production is lavish and beautiful. Call me crazy--call me a moron--but I can't wait to see the finished film.
"Okay, Adrian," I call on my way out the door. "Don't muck it up. It looks like you got something great."
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Martha Frankel wrote "Everybody's Doing It ... Or Are They?" for the January/February Movieline.