Meeting with movie stars and collecting acting tips
Take a step behind the scenes as we highlight some memorable moments from the Ottawa Citizen’s storied past. Jay Stone was a print journalist for 46 years, covering everything from police to city hall. For two decades, until he retired in 2014, he was movie critic for the Citizen and later for the CanWest and Postmedia groups.
I was a movie critic for 20 years, so I went to a lot of films: At an average of five a week, it adds up to more than 5,000. That’s even more than you watched on Netflix last month.
Sometimes I went to early morning press screenings, where I would often sit alone in a 400-seat cinema and watch, say, a violent thriller tinged with uncomfortable sex, then emerge blinking into the mid-day sun, like a perverse mole. Sometimes I was at evening previews sponsored by radio stations, where a crowd of enthusiastic fans, many eating pungent snackbar nachos, would look at their brightly lit cellphones during the film in case any of their friends had posted a cute photograph of a dog. These previews were often introduced by local disc jockeys who would recite the plot of the film we were about to see — indeed, if they would shut up we would see it right then — while I squirmed with impatience, reminding myself that this was an easier way to make a living than mining coal, although maybe not if Adam Sandler was involved.
The best part was that I sometimes got to meet movie stars. This was always exciting, especially the part when you walk into stars’ hotel rooms and realize that, in person, they look exactly like they do onscreen. This can be an unnerving experience, and I’ve heard movie writers tell famous actors, “It’s you,” as if there were some doubt. I never did this, but once, when I got to an interview room and was confronted by Charlize Theron in a clingy dress, I actually had to take a step back to regain my balance.
I liked to talk to the stars about acting, and sometimes they would give me informal tips. Michael Caine said the way to portray a drunk was not to stagger around and slur your words, but rather to try to appear sober, because that’s what real drunk people do. “There’s a little acting lesson for you,” Caine said, and I was very grateful for the advice, even though I’ve never found a use for it except right now.
I interviewed Anthony Hopkins in the outdoor courtyard café behind the Intercontinental Hotel on Bloor Street in Toronto. He was a very gracious man, and he explained how a simple change in body language could transform an actor. Then he narrowed his eyes, leaned forward, and said, in the quiet hiss of Hannibal Lecter, “You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste.” The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
“How did you do that?” I asked, and he relaxed back into Anthony Hopkins and smiled.
A lot of my interactions with Hollywood people had something to do with food, for some reason. I once interviewed Faye Dunaway, one of the stars of a terrible movie called Albino Alligator (1996). I arrived at the hotel room at the designated time — they always want you at least five minutes early so the star won’t ever have to wait — and heard this conversation through the open door.
Movie star: “Okay. Are we having lunch now?”
Functionary: “No. We have one more before lunch.”
Movie star: “What? You said we were eating at 12. Who is it?”
Functionary: “A Canadian reporter. It’ll only take 15 minutes.”
Movie star: “I was told we were having lunch at 12.”
Functionary: “We’ll make it fast. It’s the last one before lunch.”
Movie star: “I really have to eat something.”
Then someone came into the hall and told me, “Come on in. Miss Dunaway is waiting for you.”
I began to race through an interview and we were all set to wrap up in record time when the newspaper’s photographer arrived. Suddenly Miss Dunaway had all the time in the world.
“What’s that lens?” she asked, and “Why are you putting the light there? Where’s the shadow?” Like most actors, Dunaway knew almost everything there is to know about how she could be made to look and how to protect that. Not that I blame her: In Hollywood, what you look like, especially for a woman, isn’t an idle preoccupation. It’s life and death.
When we finished she leapt to her feet, said thanks, and walked out the door, turning out the light as she left. That left me sitting in the dark, searching blindly for my notebook and tape recorder. A few seconds later she reappeared. “Sorry,” she said and turned on the light. The moral: Always carry snacks at a film festival. Snacks and, if possible, a flashlight.
But I liked interviewing stars from an earlier era. When I met Lauren Bacall, who was in a movie called The Walker (2007), she had a tiny lapdog whose disposition when you walked into the room seemed to be important to the way Miss Bacall would view you as well. Before we talked, she sent her assistant out for a box of Timbits, which she liked to eat when she came to Canada, although they must make it hard to pucker your lips and blow.
In 1998, I went to dinner with a bunch of people associated with the re-release of Touch of Evil, the Orson Welles classic that had some scenes restored. I sat across from Janet Leigh, in her 70s and still beautiful, but didn’t get a chance to talk to her. However, after dinner she went around the table to say goodbye to everyone and I — the victim, I should add, of the endless glasses of complimentary wine that are poured at these events — informed her, “You’re so beautiful. You should be in every movie.” She smiled and massaged my shoulders, which is as close as I have ever come to sleeping my way to the top in Hollywood. The other thing that happened that night is that her daughter, Kelly Curtis, also an actress (Trading Places), who accompanied her to the dinner, leaned across the table and said, very kindly, “I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk.” “That’s okay, ” I replied merrily. “I have nothing to say.” “Neither do I!” exclaimed Kelly with what sounded like genuine delight.
Another old-timer I got to meet was Jerry Lewis, who came to the Cannes Film Festival in 2009 to promote a sentimental family drama called Max Rose. It was an irresistible opportunity — the love of Jerry Lewis is one of the great eccentricities of French culture, and almost defines Cannes.
Lewis was at once generous and slightly oily in an old-fashioned show-business way. His son, Christopher, who was helping his father with his French tour, was the world’s foremost authority on Jerry Lewis movies and stood at the back of the room occasionally spicing up the conversation with facts about how many movie tickets Lewis had sold in the 1950s or the box office returns of his biggest hits.
At one stage Christopher said that Lewis was particularly popular in the Palestinian Territories, and in fact many residents there had learned to speak English by watching Jerry Lewis movies.
“That’s why so many people in the Palestinian Territories say, ‘Hey lady,’ ” I said — honestly, sometimes I just can’t help myself — and Lewis took a sip from his bottle of water and said, “That’s why they say that.” He was sort of half-smiling, so it was possible that I had amused the legendary clown. These moments, when you think you have entered the consciousness of a movie star in some lasting way, become the currency of movie writers when they trade war stories.
One of my worst experiences came when I was granted one of six Canadian interviews with Sean Penn, the famously prickly star of The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004). Penn is notoriously grouchy and seems to get angry easily (other famous grumps: Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford. I was at a TIFF party once with Jian Ghomeshi, speaking of names it can be dangerous to drop, and he said that his most difficult interview wasn’t his famous on-air bout with Billy Bob Thornton, but rather with the taciturn, oneword-answer Ford). To be fair, the Toronto journalist Bruce Kirkland was a great friend of Penn’s and he used to tell how the actor would do magic tricks to amuse his companions at TIFF dinners.
None of that for me, however. The Assassination of Richard Nixon, if you’ve never seen it, is based on the true story of a loner who wants to kill the president and who, at one stage, talks to himself in a mirror.
This kind of reminded me of Taxi Driver, so when I was ushered into The Presence for my 15 minutes ( by the clock), my first question to Penn was if he thought there were echoes of that iconic movie.
“Anyone who says that is against this film, and against independent film, and I would never talk to them again,” Penn replied. I now had 14½ minutes to recover or, failing that, to race around the room and hope he couldn’t catch me. But I girded my loins and eventually got some kind of story out of him. And this is it.