Two old friends are up to some new tricks in ‘Darling’
Kasdan and Kline reunite for sixth film
LOS ANGELES — Writer/director Lawrence Kasdan and Kevin Kline have been making movies for so long that it’s understandable if the details of the early days are a little hazy.
As they await Friday’s limited opening of their Darling Companion, the longtime friends piece together the origins of the relationship that has led to six film collaborations over three decades.
“We actually met on a movie that (Kasdan) didn’t cast me in,” Kline recalls. “It was called The Bodyguard.”
“No, it was Body Heat,” Kasdan corrects, mentioning his 1981 directorial debut in which he cast William Hurt as the star.
“I was half right, wasn’t I?” Kline says with a smile. “He cast that other fellow. I forget his name.”
“Regardless,” he adds, looking at Kasdan. “I liked him still.”
That’s a good thing. The director and actor went on to make the 1983 classic The
Big Chill, Silverado (1985), I Love You to Death (1990), Grand Canyon (1991) and French Kiss (1995). And now there’s Darling Companion, based on a screenplay that Kasdan, 63, wrote with his wife Meg, about a surgeon who loses touch with his longtime wife (Diane Keaton).
“I don’t know why he keeps working with me,” Kline, 64, says after the two sit down for lunch at an L.A. restaurant. “He just won’t quit until I get it right.”
Under Kasdan’s direction, Kline has embraced comedy and drama and played French scoundrels, Italian womanizers and solid American men. For Companion, the director required him to add “selfabsorbed” to the résumé.
“He really had to reach for that,” Kasdan adds dryly.
“Leave me alone,” Kline mutters. “I’m no more absorbed than . . . well, I cannot compare myself to anyone else, because I’ve never thought of anyone else.”
Kline’s comment has Kasdan laughing. “It’s fun with him,” he says. “It’s very much like this. There’s no fighting. You’re laughing half the time.”
Darling Companion marks a Baby Boom follow-up to their best-known dramas, The Big Chill and Grand Canyon. Though the characters are different, they all follow Kline in different phases of his life.
“We were in our 30s for The Big Chill and in our 40s for Grand Canyon,” Kasdan says. “And now we are of ‘a certain age.’ ”
“Hollywood isn’t making movies about this age,” he adds. “The protagonists are very rarely over 60. Yet the stories are just as relevant.”
The two want to continue telling these stories. Kasdan is intent on creating a TV series with Kline and actor Martin Short (“two of the funniest people on Earth”). Or, perhaps the prolific partnership can continue on the big screen.
“How about this,” Kline says. “Diane Keaton and I together again, in a (nursing) home.”
“That 60-year-old (audience) that’s badly served by Hollywood? Well, I’m sure the 70- and 80-year-olds are feeling it even more strongly,” Kasdan says. “Who knows? God willing we keep on making movies.”