Susan Sarandon: On Movies, Men and Motherhood

Q: I interviewed Geena Davis right after Thelma & Louise, and she was completely floored over all the backlash that was hitting the film.

A: Clearly it had nothing to do with the reasons that people talked about, because it is not male-bashing. The body count is nothing compared with movies where people are killed for much less reason. All I can say is that I never anticipated any of it, either the positive or the negative response. I never expected it to be so strong. I've gotten mail from men who were so moved and I know that it is a film that went over really well in, for instance, black neighborhoods. They knew exactly what was coming down, they were two steps ahead, and they didn't seem to be threatened.

Q: You mentioned testing movies in the Valley--what do you think of test-screening films?

A: Sometimes they test things and they don't trust the audience. Two people in a test group say, "Was he related to her or what was happening there?" And they go, uh-oh, gotta put in a voice-over, because they always want to appeal to the lowest common denominator to get those extra bucks. Does that mean that [the actor is then] beholden to have sex with animals if they decide that they should put it in afterwards? I don't know legally what the test of that is.

Q: I don't know either.

A: You know what they'll do? They'll just take you from another film, like they did in Forrest Gump, and then they'll make up the footage.

Q: What do you think about that? That's scary, isn't it?

A: I think we're gonna have to start patenting ourselves or something, or owning our images. A lot of actors are talking about it already. Because clearly it's something to be dealt with. I mean, it's a clumsy version in Forrest Gump, but it's a beginning, and it will get better, and then they can do away with us completely... I think that they should just stop breaking our hearts and they should dictate from the very beginning who they want to be in the film and what they want to have happen, so at least, when you make a movie, you won't be so devastated when they call you in to reshoot the whole thing.

Q: Have you been on movies that have been reshot because of the test screenings?

A: Yeah, absolutely.

Q: Like what?

A: White Palace. We shot the ending that was in the book, which is: she sits down, they look at each other, and you don't know what's gonna happen between them. But Pretty Woman had just come out, and they were thinking, "If we could only get him to marry her and they could have a big laugh." Jimmy [Spader] and I, we fought and fought, trying to keep our characters intact, but we did two reshoots on that. On Sweet Hearts Dance, that was a different problem, in that Don Johnson kind of threw the script out. So what happened was we had to do a month of reshoots at two different times to put back things that had been taken out.

Q: They didn't put back enough.

A: What?

Q: I just can't imagine how much they would have had to put back to make Sweet Hearts Dance into anything coherent.

A: The real mistake with that movie was that I thought it was about one thing, and they decided it was about these two guys who were never gonna grow up, a male-bonding thing. And who cares about that?

Q: Really, we get to see assholes like that everyday.

A: So, yes. I think the screenings and the discussion groups are terrible. The interesting thing is when they leave the discussion group, and you go out to dinner with all the suits and your agent and everybody else, no one agrees with what just came down in the discussion group. Everyone already has their opinion and they use the discussion group to rationalize it.

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