Garry Marshall: Runaway Funny

Runaway Bride was shot in small towns and cornfields outside Baltimore. Marshall says, "It was December, and there'd be locals standing out there in the bitter cold hoping to get glimpses of the actors. So I asked Julia and Richard to come out of their trailers and say hello to the people. Well, with Richard they yelled, but when Julia got close to them they would pant and scream and some would start to cry. I'm talking adults. I've only seen that kind of reaction with Princess Di and the Pope. So she stands there and greets the people and signs autographs and after that she doesn't know what to say. One day we said, 'Julia will only sign autographs for people under five feet tall.' And adults were getting down on their knees. Occasionally I would have to intercede and hustle her off."

The Julia madness was not limited to land. "She had a birthday party on a boat off Annapolis. And two other boats followed her and the people on those boats actually had counterfeit party invitations. It's very hard to be her right now. Guys from the newspapers were offering crew members $ 1,000 for any kind of gossip about her, and she gets hurt by the stuff that's written. Richard tried to get her mind off it. He said, 'I'm heading toward 50 and Garry's heading toward 70, so who gives a shit what they say?' But Julia's 31 and does care."

"How have the two of them grown as actors?"

"Well, Richard was not known as Milton Berle when we did Pretty Woman. He's come a long way. He's much more relaxed doing comedy. Julia's improved dramatically. Her craft is superb. She knows her lines, she knows everyone's lines, she knows where the camera is and she's even aware when the camera is too close for comedy. She always liked Lucille Ball, but in Pretty Woman she was afraid to go out there too far. Like all the young people now, she wanted to be clever. They all want to be clever. No one wants to be funny. She'd tell the prop man, 'Don't give Garry any more props because he'll make me do something crazy with them.'

"In the scene at the opera, for instance, I gave her the opera glasses. She said, 'I don't know how to use these,' and I said, 'That's what were going to play. How do we use it?' Now she looks for new things. She'll give you three or four ways to go with a moment. And Richard and Julia have become two of the best in playing that moment of connection that neither wants to acknowledge. They'll do it with a look or he'll hold her hand a second too long or she'll improvise a perfect line like 'Suddenly I can't climb a fence,' after she gets halfway up and then falls back into his arms.

"Of course, the other big difference is Julia's such a shtarker [in good shape]. When you work with the 19-to-22-year-old actors, they're always so exhausted, because they're up all night dancing. Naps they take all day. But Julia was out running, jumping rope, kickboxing and she did her own horse-riding stunts."

During the shoot, a magazine article came out listing the world's most popular actresses and both Julia and Joan Cusack, who's also in Runaway Bride, were on the list. Marshall says, "The bigger you get, the more I make fun of you. I'd wave the article and say, 'I'm stuck with two of the top 25. Could we see if two of the world's most popular actresses can speak a little louder?'" And Gere was not spared. "Richard looks great, but his hair is now so white that I told Julia that if she stood close enough to him, I wouldn't have to light her. I never mention how much Richard and Julia are getting paid, but when I need another take, I always say, 'For what I'm getting paid, that was not good enough. We have to do a little better for my sake. I feel guilty taking the money."'

"What do you see Julia doing with her money and her fame?"

"I think she's still trying to figure out what to do. She needs something else in her life that's rewarding, and she can't be Susan Sarandon. Susan can discuss world hunger and amnesty and artists' rights and still wear a hot little outfit. I talked to Julia about how to give back, and I see her going the Audrey Hepburn route. That is, helping with children who are hungry and dying all over the world. She's most comfortable with children. She was hugging my grandkids all the time."

Marshall's sets are usually family affairs. On Runaway Bride, his son Scott shot second-unit scenes, and daughter Kathleen, wife Barbara and the two grandkids all played bit parts. In addition, his sister Penny helps him with his casting. The family name was Mascirelli. His father was an advertising executive, his mother was a dance teacher, and after she died Garry underwrote a dance center named in her honor at his alma mater, Northwestern. He majored in journalism, and after a stint in the army, in postwar Korea, he got a job as a copyboy at the New York Daily News. "I was never very good at it," he says. In his spare time he was writing jokes for his nightclub act. Comedian Phil Foster taught him an important lesson. "He said, 'If I wanted to write humor out of my imagination, I'd be out of the business in two weeks. You must look at the world through a comedy eye. Look every day at people, their behavior, what they say, because actual people will say things you could never think to write.'"

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