I Blame Dennis Hopper (26 page)

And I watched as Matt wrote it out exactly as the guy dictated, didn't even look up, and handed it back to the guy, who smiled at him gratefully, “Hey, thanks a lot, Matt.”

And Matt said, “Hey, good luck, man.” And he meant it: Go in peace, my son. Make that relationship work. That's what the movies do for you. They give you hope. God bless Matt Dillon. That's what I say. Now go watch
Crash
,
Wild Things
, or any movie he's been in.

I got Matt interested in
Grace of My Heart
pretty much the way I fantasized I would except that we had clothes on. That was a joke! I always say: I played Matt's sister, and I played his wife, and let me tell you, playing his wife was a lot more fun. When we eventually shot the scene in
Grace
in which Matt asks me—while we are recording “God Give Me Strength”—if I want to go home with him, I'm supposed to think about it and finally say, “Yes.” But it was hard not to laugh, because I could feel Allison next to the camera almost yelling, “Yes! Yes! Go home with him! What are you, nuts?” We were girls, after all, and only human. Sigh.

I wanted Matt to read the script, because I knew he would be so great as this character, but I didn't want to put a burden on our friendship, so I came up with a plan. The cover of the script had a very enticing image of a sexy girl group called the Shangri-Las–remembered best for the song “Leader of the Pack.” I knew the image would catch Matt's eye, so I deliberately put the script on the bedside table in my hotel room, hoping he would notice it. Actors are nosy, and they can smell scripts, and sure enough, he spotted it, picked it up, and started to flip through it.

“What's this?” he said.

And I brushed it off, “Oh, it's a musical about the Brill Building. Nothing you'd be interested in.”

Matt's eyes lit up. He loved music almost more than we did. He mentioned the music film he did—Cameron Crowe's
Singles
—about the Seattle music scene, in which he played a grunge-rock musician.

“Yeah,” I said with a sniff, “you're not right for the part at all. He's like a Brian Wilson, Beach Boys type. Great part, but you're
really
not right for it.”

Matt rolled it up under his arm. “Do you mind if I read it?”

“OK,” I said, “but I
really
don't think it's for you.”

He called me the next day from his hotel room, asking me a lot of questions about the script, which is always a good sign. The entire casting of the film seemed to fall into place like that. We had Eric Stoltz playing my first husband and songwriting partner, Howard. Our relationship had some shades of Carole King and Gerry Goffin, who was also helping with music. We had John Turturro playing my manager. He bore some characteristics of Phil Spector. Allison said, “I'm not sure what would have happened if we didn't get John because I wrote the part entirely around him.” Now we had Matt playing my second husband, Jay Phillips. We were soon joined by two fantastic actresses: Bridget Fonda, playing a Lesley Gore–type singer named Kelly Porter, and Patsy Kensit as another songwriter, Cheryl Steed, who was based loosely on Ellie Greenwich.

Grace of My Heart
was the second movie I helped produce—
Search and Destroy
was the first—and it spoiled me forever. This was the height of the glory of independent filmmaking, when you could go to a studio (in our case, Universal) with a few key names attached—like John Turturro, who was coming off an amazing performance in
Quiz Show
—pitch the story to a studio executive (in our case, Casey Silver), and come out with a deal. We also had the strength of Marty as our executive producer behind us, vouching for us. It worked. We were thrilled to get the green light until we found out that Kevin Smith's movie
Mallrats
, which was green lighted at around the same time, got a bigger budget than we did. Thrilled for Kevin—he was a friend and a talented filmmaker—but not so much for Allison. Someone explained it to us this way: “
Grace of My Heart
is a woman's picture.” Allison was a woman. I was a woman. The crew had a lot of women on it. The editor was a woman. The music supervisor was a woman. But what makes it “a woman's picture”? It's true that Allison always had candles burning on the set. You know you're working with a woman when you can smell the scent of Ylang Ylang candles while shooting a love scene. It's true we did girlie things. Like, if you so desired, you could list on the call sheet your love status: Married, Single, or Looking. Yes, we'd have tarot card readings and the Norse ritual of the casting of the rune stones to seek wisdom and understanding. And yes, Allison did give me a goddess amulet in the shape of a uterus on the first day of shooting. But does that make it “a woman's picture”?

It was
great
to able to embrace our feminine side. I was brought up around a lot of men and was always taught to keep anything “womanly” private, especially your period. One day Allison had menstrual cramps, and our male producer, Daniel Hassid, got her an ice pack to help her with her pain. I remember seeing Allison up on the dolly, behind the camera, holding this ice pack across herself, looking through the viewfinder. That image of Allison, who so embraced being a woman, gave me the courage to do the same. She set a tone that at times felt so casual you felt that you never had anything to be embarrassed about. I did my first nude scene—and my second and third—maybe my fourth all in one movie, thanks to Allison. Allison made me feel like I was a beautiful woman when I did those love scenes. When a man makes you feel beautiful, that's one thing. But when a woman makes you feel beautiful, she's talking about your insides, too.

As the character Denise Waverly grew as a woman, so did I. Allison made me feel it was OK to have an opinion about things. I was playing a woman going through every upheaval that happens in a woman's life. Love vs. career, sexism, marriage, divorce, contraception, abortion, adultery, babies, death, drugs, your mother! It was daunting.

Allison had the first on-screen depiction of a woman's water breaking; we had big discussions about that. I had never had a baby. I mean, did people want to see that? Did people want to see me get an abortion in the middle of a fun musical about the Brill Building? What I admired so much about Allison was that we could fight passionately about something because we were always fighting to make it better, to make it more truthful. Every disagreement we had, and we didn't have a lot, was about the interpretation of the scene. What would this woman do? What had Allison done? What had I done? The parallels of my life and Allison's life all made it into the movie in one way or another, until I was playing one woman. I was my mother; I was Allison's mother; I was Allison; I was Illeana. And while all that was happening, the cameras just happened to be rolling. Sometimes it felt like I was filming my own life as it flashed before my eyes. When Mick Fleetwood had to drop out of the film, Bridget Fonda's father came in to replace him, and Peter Fonda—Captain America from
Easy Rider
—was cast as my hippie mentor, Guru Dave. I had blamed Dennis Hopper for making
Easy Rider
because it made my dad become a hippie and start a commune, and now I was a hippie shooting on a commune with Peter Fonda. When I looked at the rushes of my smoking a joint with Peter Fonda I thought, Yup. My movie life and my real life have come full circle.

Grace of My Heart
became a musical melodrama with the personal tone of a '70s film. A love vs. career story in the vein of
A Star Is Born
. “Not the Barbra Streisand version!” I hear Allison saying. All right, I would be lying if I didn't say that
Grace of My Heart
was, yes, an excuse for me to re-create my favorite actresses' performances, outfits, and hairstyles all in one movie. If I did the director's commentary, you'd hear me say, “Oh, here's me doing Liza in
New York New York
; that's Judy; that's Ellen Burstyn in
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore;
Goldie Hawn from
Cactus Flower
; there's Audrey Hepburn's ponytail, trench coat, flats.” I was shameless. And Allison knew it, so she would keep a strict eye on me if I veered toward camp. As in the time I tried to get away with Barbra's Afro-permed look from
A Star Is Born
. I walked onto the set to do this very serious scene, and Allison took one look at me and said, “No. Illeana. This is not a Barbra Streisand movie.” I slunk back to the trailer.

In the middle of our nice melodrama, Allison went all female Cassavetes on me! Allison wanted to see me angry, and that was a pretty scary thing. I was taught to be a nice girl. Nice girls don't get angry. I remember getting reamed by Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse when I couldn't slap an actor across the face. He said, “You're either a lady or you're an actress. Which is it?” I sat down, humiliated. Of course I had anger in me, but it was not an emotion with which I was comfortable. On
Grace
we were going to be shooting a scene with John Turturro in which he is disgusted with me for giving up on my career and myself. I wanted to rehearse it, but Allison and John didn't want to talk about it; they just wanted to shoot it. John and I worked so well in the film together because Denise Waverly worshipped Joel Millner, and I worshipped John.

Our relationship in the film was also based on Denise's needing his approval, and I wanted John to approve of how I would act the scene, because Denise/I was going to have to get angry and Denise/I was terrified of getting angry with an actor whose approval Denise/I so desperately wanted.

I don't know if John knew I was just scared, but his refusal to rehearse, which felt like he was abandoning me, was the very trigger I needed to tap into the rage that Denise felt from Jay's death. I thought, You son of a bitch, here I am, I adore you, and you won't even help me work out this scene. Well John had absolutely no idea what I was going to do when he walked out there, but he certainly did once we began. I hit him as hard as I possibly could within the context of the scene. I let go of all the anger I had ever experienced, and let me tell you, he gave it back with everything he had. It was electric. It was what I had signed up for. I went from being a “lady” to an actress.

There was another fight on
Grace
that was just as inspiring, only Allison was at its center. We had a very tight, thirty-day shooting schedule, and things had been going very well, and we had been told by one of the producers that we were going to get an extra week of shooting time once we got to Malibu. We were so relieved, because this meant that we would have extra time to work on some of the more emotionally demanding scenes that were coming up with Matt Dillon, who had just arrived. We were in Malibu, and the feeling on the set was jubilant. We were really proud of the work we had been doing, and now we'd have two weeks to finish instead of one. Matt had arrived and was in the makeup trailer getting ready for his first day.

I needed to get approval for an outfit so I went to Allison's trailer and knocked. I heard someone say come in, so I stepped up, and there, sitting on the ground, was Allison, surrounded by all of the producers, and she was casting those Norse runes! The ancient stones that foretold the future. Yeah, when you go to the director's trailer and she's casting the runes with the producers to see how the day will turn out—maybe not a good sign. Apparently, Allison had just been told that we were not getting our extra week after all. The tension seemed pretty thick, so I said, “Why don't I come back later?”

I stepped out of the trailer and was about twenty feet toward the makeup trailer when the door opened and Allison's uterus-shaped goddess amulet went sailing through the air. The producers started filing out of her trailer and down the steps, and Allison hurled her runes at them as they walked out. Then she came down the steps with her purse and started to head for her car. The female producer tried to stop her, and Allison started hitting her with her purse, and then the female producer started hitting her back with
her
purse. And they're having a full-on girl fight! Meanwhile, I looked up and saw Matt Dillon—in his wig—watching the entire thing. He pulled me aside and said, “You want to tell me what's been going on here?” I laughed and said, “Well, Matt, these things are bound to happen on a sensitive woman's picture.”

Everyone was OK, and pretty soon we were all hugging and forgiving again. Allison did sustain some serious damage to her goddess amulet, but that's the passion she had for the film. She was willing to fight for it. We got those extra workdays back, by the way. She got us those days back.

Some battles we lost. There were a couple of beautiful scenes with Eric Stoltz that were cut. One was a scene that showed the complexity of Denise's and Howard's personal and professional relationship as married singer-songwriters. To me, it reflected the challenges of a man loving a woman who was changing. Howard understood that for Denise to grow as an artist they would have to say goodbye. Yet the scene held out hope he would still be there and hinted at a happy ending for them. Allison even wrote a scene in which Howard comes back; he appears like a mirage, walking over a sand dune outside Denise's beach house. Marty thought that a happy ending was a cop-out and would be too sentimental. He felt that Denise must end up alone, having made it on her own. Art winning out over happiness I guess. Maybe I'm an optimist but I would like to think a woman can have both love and a career. Of course, it didn't work for Janet Gaynor or Judy Garland or Barbra Streisand in
A Star Is Born,
or Jill Clayburgh in
An Unmarried Woman
, either, so
Grace of My Heart
ends with Denise alone at her piano, with no man in sight.