Dialogue on Film: Jessica Lange
Source: American Film
Date: 8/1990
It's not easy for a movie star to stay centered on the craft of acting. The pressures and prizes of fame, money and power have a way of killing artistic growth. Much easier to follow the shining path everyone expects you to take, the one marked Least Resistance, than the uncertain direction in which your creative spirit leads. It's this more difficult course that Jessica Lange has chosen. Following this inner voice has meant taking some chances that haven't always paid off. But it's also earned her a well-deserved reputation as one of the best actresses in Hollywood.
Lange's first film was nearly her last. Few people were willing to take her seriously after her reprisal of the Fay Wray role in Dino De Laurentiis' disastrous remake of King Kong (1976). She was radiant as the angel of death in All That Jazz (1979), but didn't recover from the King Kong debacle until 1981, when Bob Rafelson cast her as the femme who proves fatale to Jack Nicholson in The Postman Always Rings Twice.
With Postman, Lange blossomed into an actress of remarkable intensity and craft. From the emotionally troubled title character in Frances in 1982 to the lawyer who defends her father against charges of Nazi war crimes in last year's Music Box, Lange has infused her performances with a sense of the real and the personal, picking up four Academy Award nominations and one Oscar (for Tootsie) along the way.
Her search for challenging roles has sometimes led her to movies strong on character but deeply flawed in other ways, like Crimes of the Heart (1986), Everybody's All-American (1988), and Men Don't Leave (1989). In many cases, Lange's performance is the only thing that makes her pictures worth seeing.
In her talk with an overflow crowd of students at the American Film Institute, Lange stressed the importance of a character's emotional life.
How did you manage to move from King Kong to your current status as a respected dramatic actress? Did you plot your career or did you just hope to get a break and then do your best?
I think the latter. In the beginning of your career, you have no control over anything. When I did King Kong, nobody had any idea that I could act. I always knew I could. But you can't convince anybody until you're given the opportunity. You really do have to just wait until you get a chance to prove it to people. And that came with Postman, which then led to getting the part in Frances. And then suddenly, everybody was so stunned. They were so amazed that I could actually walk and talk.
Watching your characters in different movies, from Postman to Frances, Tootsie to Music Box, there's a common thread, an intensity in what you're doing. Is that something that you look for in a part or is that Jessica coming out in the character?
It's probably a combination of the two. What becomes more and more interesting, the longer I work, is what's left unsaid...the internal life of a character that comes out in little things like a gesture...the subtleties of acting, rather than the broad strokes. A lot of that comes from the preparation. If you have a real life going under the character, it just pops up here and there. I do look for characters that are written with some kind of complexity or at least leave you the opportunity to make something complex out of them. I like playing different levels at the same time. You know, its that constant shifting and moving that presents the challenge.
When you get a script. what kind of preparation do you go through?
Right now, I'm in the middle of this really excruciating process of trying to get the character right before I can even begin to prepare (for Blue Sky). But if the script is ready and the character is what I want it to be, then I go through a real personal development with it. I almost always create a history for the character so that a reference, even it it's just a line or a word, has a certain resonance in my person when I'm playing the part.
It has to do with imagining. I find more and more that I think the better the actor, the greater the imagination. It really is like child's play, more than anything. I see my own kids when they're playing a game: My daughter, who's now four, she'll talk and she'll move small objects, and she becomes so engrossed in the world of her imagination that the reality is overwhelming. I think that's what an actor has to do. It really has to do with the power of the imagination more than anything.
What do you look for in a script?
Usually what makes me decide on a part is that it presents something that I've never investigated before. I always look for an emotional arc that exists from the beginning of the film to the end. What is this character experiencing emotionally? And that usually is the way I decide. For instance, when I first got the script for Music Box, it really wasn't very polished, but I understood immediately the possibilities of it because of the emotional journey that this woman was going to have to take.
What has been your worst experience in filmmaking?
As an actor, you have so little control over what's finally going to be there on the screen, what people are going to see and yet, at the same time, you end up taking almost total responsibility - because you're onscreen and that's what the audience is looking at. If the film doesn't work, they assume that it's something that you did wrong as an actor.
I found that out when I did Everybody’s All-American. It had been offered to me about four years earlier at Warner Bros., with Michael Apted directing and Toomy Lee Jones. And then for one reason or another, Warner Bros. postponed it...well, they actually just kind of shelved it. I think a lot of it had to do with an article in American Film magazine about the 10 greatest unproduced scripts (April 1987). Everybody’s All-American was one of them, and I thin the article generated some interest again in the project. The next thing I knew, I got a call asking if I would still be interested in playing that part, with Taylor Hackford directing. My immediate response was no. Then a lot of people called and said, You should think about this, it’s wonderful. And it was – it was really a wonderful part. So I reconsidered and decided I would do it after all.
And then, you know, little by little, they kind of chipped away at it. I noticed it in the first rewrite: There was a little less about the character and a little more about football. And when I saw his first rough cut, I went absolutely crazy. I wrote long letters, I called. I’d always get the same response: Yes, yes, I see your point. It was nothing at all like the movie I had originally wanted to do. The character was just kind of a caricature. The relationship, which was the most interesting part of the film for me, tracked 25 years of these two almost stock characters, you know, a Southern beauty queen and a college football hero, but there was something so touching about the story as it was written by Tom Rickman.
That’s the only film that I have been truly disappointed in. The other films, for better or worse, they are what they are, but that one is not what it was supposed to be.
What about your best experience?
Two films were for me just the best experience in filmmaking. The first one was Postman, working with Jack Nicholson and Bob. The work was really thrilling, ‘cause it was different from what I had done before. And Music Box: working with Costa-Gavras was probably the best experience I’ve ever had as an actress working with a director because of his amazing sensitivity and kindness and intelligence. Costas creates a situation that’s very productive. For the actor, he makes – at least for me he did – an environment that was very supporting and very nurturing, which allowed me to really try and experiment. He also has a certain intuition as to when to stay out of your way and when to approach you. Words can have such an impact, they can either move you positively or they can shut you down and Costas was just amazingly intuitive and intelligent as when to stay out of the way and when one or two words needed to be said.
As an actress, what do you think is the most important function of the director?
To take care of everything that I’m not taking care of. It’s tricky. Some directors can get in your way. And what amazes me sometimes is how little film directors understand the process of acting and how an actor has to arrive at a place. As soon as a director says to me, Can you cry on this line? I know we’re out of sync. We’re not going to be talking about the same thing ever. There’s this great story: Elia Kazan was directing something and trying to get this emotion from an actor, and it wasn’t happening. Finally he went up to the actor – and he or she was wearing something silk – and Kazan said, What is that feel of silk? What does that mean to you? It was something he understood inherently, intuitively, about how to talk to an actor. For an actor, the only way you can work is from your senses.
I think Paul Brickman is really a talented filmmaker, but there was a case where we had virtually no communication whatsoever. I never knew if he printed one of my takes the entire time we were shooting Men Don’t Leave because I never heard him say, That’s good, let’s print it. Sometimes he’d talk to me, but he’d talk in such ways that I couldn't even understand. It was like, What the hell do you want? Just tell me. Ultimately, you know, we ended up working well together, but it was not a comfortable situation, for him or for me. But somehow we ended up making a film where is all gelled.
Do you prefer working with directors who are very specific about what they’d like or do you prefer ones who create an atmosphere and then let you work?
The latter, definitely. The only director I’ve ever worked with who was meticulous to that point was Bobby Fosse. And it wasn’t just with me, I saw him with everybody while we were doing All That Jazz. He would actually give you line readings. He was a genius, and he had such tremendous talent, that going into it, you just decided you would work that way for him. I had such a small part in it that it didn’t really bother me to work that way. The character I played was really a function of the film more than a full-blown character. If I were creating a really complete character, then I might find it difficult to work that way.
When you go into a project, does it matter who your costars are going to be?
No. The worst part about film is that it is, in a sense, such a narcissistic art form, ‘cause the film actor could actually do it alone if he had to. That is terrible to say, but it’s true. I mean, I had a scene in Men Don’t Leave that is kind of a pivotal point for this character. This mother drives over to this very nice, safe, little house in the middle of the night. They have to go wake her son up ‘cause she wants to bring him home. We were shooting at 3:00 in the morning. And the little boy who was playing the part said that he wanted to go home. He went home, and they took a little gaffers tape and made an X on the doorknob, which would be his eyeline, and I ended up playing the scene to that. A film actor can get away with that if you have to, because you’re generating all this stuff inside you. Now, one thing that bothers me about film acting is that it is always such a private thing. This actors’ preparing in his trailer and then he walks out and does his close-ups. You walk out and you’re off-camera for him but you’re just kind of watching what he’s doing, and then it turns around and you’re on-camera. That’s the problem with film acting. It’s unavoidable, it’s too bad.
Nicholson has a sense of the technical side of acting better than anyone I’ve ever worked with. He understands the technical essence of filmmaking, and how you adapt your work to suit that. And I think that’s what an actor has to do. I rebelled against that for a while. But in the end, you have to, at a certain point, play for the camera. That’s one of the disciplines of film acting.
I think acting in film could be a lot better if we didn’t always have to deal with the technical difficulties. I’ve said to directors, You can do all the tricky camera work, but you’re not gonna have a film if I don’t deliver this performance. It’s not going to have any resonance whatsoever unless the actor is allowed to do what we do.
How important is it to you to intellectualize the film as a whole, to consider the political or social implications of this film?
I never think in those terms. I did an interview for Music Box: This man had just been talking to Costa and mentioned what Costa had said about the film, about the essence of evil and historical consciousness, and he said, Is that what the film is to you? And I said, No. The only thing I know about this film is that it’s a love story. It’s about this woman’s devotion and love and commitment to her family and to her father. I always have to find the simplest line, the most organic emotional thread.
What about after it’s over? With a part like Frances, a part that’s really draining? In the theater, you get to tear down a set and that removes it, but what do you do the last day? Go home and feed the kids?
Yeah, there’s definitely a period of adjustment. It’s getting better for me now, though. I mean, with something like Frances, that hung around me too long. I felt real haunted by that character. I truly believe that when you allow emotions to kind of run wild in you, and especially emotions like that which are very, very destructive and hurtful, that tit takes its toll. It affects you physically. Sometimes you come out of a film and you feel like you’ve got to start piecing everything back together. The great thing now for me is my kids, because they create continuity for me when I’m making a film. When I come home at night, I’m not allowed the possibility of staying in character. You’re mom, and you can’t be floating around thinking about the Holocaust. So that’s great. It helps me a lot.
You said earlier that when you first saw the script of Music Box, it wasn’t that good. Is there such a shortage of good scripts that come to you that you have to take a good character in the context of a poor script, as opposed to a script that has it all?
Believe me, Music Box wasn’t a poor script. I mean, compared to poor scripts, this one looked like it could’ve been a Pulitzer Prize winner. On the whole, though, there are not a great many wonderful parts or wonderful scripts out there. Every once in a while, you'll get into a little spurt and suddenly, there will be a lot of wonderful roles. And you kind of back em' up and lot of them. Then there will be a time when there aren't any, and you can't find anything that you want to do. Now, it's funny, 'cause in the last couple of years, there were great women's roles for a time. Now there are none. And there are a lot of really great roles for actors, for men. And I don't know why it works, there's just something, you know, some kind of cycle of nature or whatever.
In addition to being a very fine actress, you're also a movie star. Does that also carry baggage in terms of what roles you're expected to take?
Well, I never make decisions based on that. But having these tow films come out so close together, Men Don't Leave and Music Box, puts you in one of these awful situations where every time you pick up a newspaper or something, there's a review of your work. I notice a sense of anger a lot of times: Why does she feel she has to play these dowdy characters? Why can't we see her in another film like Tootsie? Why does she feel she has to be dull and drab to be a good actress? It's amazing to me that people don't see the point. The point is: why would this Hungarian-American woman, living in Chicago and working as a lawyer, look like a movie star?
I always thought of myself as a character actress because I play characters. I've played people like Patsy Cline or Frances Farmer, who happened to have moments of glamour. I'm not narcissistic in that I feel that I have to look great on film. And I know some actresses do. It doesn't matter to met if people don't think I look good. What does irk me, though, is this perception that, because I am who I am, I should look for parts like the one in Tootsie. The only thing that matters is my own personal development as an actor. And I've tried in all my choices to be truthful. And for better or worse, you know, I think I made good choices.
What are your plans for the future?
I really want to do different things in the next 10 years. I figure I've got maybe another good five years in film and then... then the parts are gonna all go to those other girls - the younger ones. Then I'll make my move to do more and more theater and less film. I'd also like to try to direct. And every once in a while, I think, Yeah, I can do this, 'cause I've been watching it done for a long time. And then I hear a speech from somebody like Akira Kurosawa...and I think, Well, maybe not this year.