I Blame Dennis Hopper (34 page)

We had a character, Coworker Lance Krapp, played by Michael Irpino, who desperately wants to be Swedish, so he wears this crazy synthetic blond wig. Well, “Lance” was so beloved by IKEA that he became an ambassador when we were shooting, greeting shoppers as they entered the store. No one found it at all unusual that this IKEA coworker was wearing a crazy blond wig. His name tag said
COWORKER OF THE YEAR
, and people just assumed that he was. Normally on a set you have what's called lock off, which means that the only people allowed are actors and crew. There's no talking; there's no moving when shooting a scene. However, we were working in a
live store
and were all wearing our IKEA outfits, so shoppers would watch us film, tell me they loved me in
Stir of Echoes
, and then, in the middle of shooting, ask, “Could you tell me where the towels are?” I once ran into a very high-profile casting director, and I had to convince him that I was not
really
working at IKEA! And I was pulling story lines from IKEA managers and coworkers. Magnus told me about a “team-building event” that was designed for coworkers to share ideas about work but turned into a singles mixer. It became an episode. All the while, I was being given more and more responsibility, and bigger budgets. We were the first Web series to go fully union. I was dealing with complex issues involving crews and budgets. We were releasing soundtracks with the band Sparhusen and working with Swedish bands, such as Marching Band. We set up distribution with companies such as Blip, My Damn Channel, and Dailymotion. I oversaw our Facebook and Twitter pages, and interacted with the IKEA fan sites. I learned all about social and transmedia strategies. It was like being paid to learn how to become a successful producer. I was finding skills I never knew I had, and I loved it.

Over the years we attracted a cornucopia of stars including Keanu Reeves, Tim Meadows, Cheri Oteri, David Henrie, Fred Willard, Patricia Heaton, Laraine Newman, Ricki Lake, Roger Bart, and Kate Micucci. We ran the production out of my little bungalow house in West Hollywood, sometimes shooting there as well. I was an actress playing a role of an IKEA Coworker of the Year who started being treated like an IKEA coworker. I was shooting a film in Scottsdale, Arizona, and my season four executive, Raymond Simanavicius, who took over when Magnus left, said to me, “Are you going to find time to visit the IKEA in Tempe?” I said, “Well, Raymond, I'm making a movie; I don't think so,” and there was dead silence at the other end. It was the same joke. “You realize I'm an actress, right? I don't actually work for IKEA?”

We were getting ready to shoot the fourth season, and I was invited to IKEA's U.S. headquarters, in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, to take part in an all-day think tank and work session with the heads of marketing. I really wanted to have an IKEA bike, because that was something all of the IKEA coworkers got, and for season four Raymond Simanavicius personally brought one to my house. Yes. It was in a box in fifty pieces, and yes, I had to put it together. We parodied the entire experience on
This Side Up
, which was our last season. This was the story line: An actress goes to work at IKEA because she wants to get out of show business but starts doing an Internet talk show called
This Side Is Up
on the floor of IKEA that becomes a big hit and forces her to go back into show business. We ended with Tom Arnold's staging an intervention to get me to leave IKEA. The hardest part for me was walking away from the safety and creative freedom. After five years, they had given me all the tools and the confidence I needed to be a filmmaker. The metaphor “easy to assemble” had also applied to me. As I worked on the show, the “life improvement” store and the “life improvement actress” meshed into a real-life story line of triumph, artistically, economically, and professionally.

I asked Fred Dubin recently, “Why on earth did you guys move forward with me?”

And he said, “I once watched you up at Sundance sing a Cat Stevens song and thought you might be a fun person to do business with.” Thank you, “Wild World.”

Then he said more seriously, “You thought like a marketer. My job was finding the right person to do something for the client that hadn't been done before.” I think we did that, Fred. We did indeed.

Easy to Assemble
was voted the number-two most influential idea created at MEC that year.
Advertising Age
awarded it one of the top five Best Branded Deals of 2010. We were featured in large profiles in the business section of
The New York Times
and in
The Wall Street Journal
as something now called branded entertainment. Featured in textbooks and case studies. We were nominated for seven Streamy Awards and won two, for Best Product Integration and Best Ensemble Cast. We won six Webby awards. I received an ITV Fest Innovator Award, the award for Best Online Performance from the Banff World TV Fest, and a 2010 NATPE Digital Luminary Award. By season four we had averaged more than 50 million views on sites such as Dailymotion, YouTube, My Damn Channel, KoldCast, Hulu, Blip, and many more.
Ad Age
called
Easy to Assemble
“the most successful branded show of all time.” We even branched out, working with other brands such as Trident, JetBlue, Hasbro, and Nabisco, all of whom were featured or cross-promoted through the show.

You can't do a show about Sweden and not make reference to Ingmar Bergman. The truth is, I had never seen a Bergman movie except for
Fanny and Alexander
. I had seen Woody Allen's movies and knew he worshiped Bergman, but I didn't know why. I always felt his films would be intellectually over my head. Death plays a game of chess with a knight. What? I decided to immerse myself in Bergman, and his films became a revelation for me. You can think you've seen every film out there, and then you discover someone, and it changes you forever. I had always had ideas in my head that I thought were too far-out to actually ever write about. Bergman gave me the courage to express what I was feeling inside. He did not shy away from absolute, gut-wrenching grief, which is at the core of all comedy, anyway.
Through a Glass Darkly
,
Wild Strawberries,
and
The Seventh Seal
were about as close to the pain and joy of life as any other films I'd seen. Like Albert Brooks, he made films about the human condition, but he made them from deep inside. He went to the bone. He captured the living, breathing soul of a character. Watching Bergman movies dramatically changed my writing. I moved away from just jokes and funny situations to the inner life of
Illeanarama
and
Illeana, who happened to be playing her. I had a vocabulary now. Simple and honest writing that felt more like I was sharing my intimate thoughts. The show took on a different tone, and it caught the notice of Robert Lloyd of the
Los Angeles Times
when he wrote, “
Easy to Assemble
is not a perfect thing … But I love it. It's honest and sweet and original and, especially this year, it's shot through with a feeling of ripening possibility that defines equally its main character and the person who made her.”

Season three,
Finding North
, was a road trip through Sweden, so I reached out to a Swedish agency in Stockholm to see if they had any Swedish-speaking actors living in California. I got an email back from an agent there named Aleksandra Mandic. It turned out that she had represented Harriet Andersson–who had been the star of many Bergman films. She sent some wonderful Swedish actors my way, all of whom made it into
Easy to Assemble
. We were trying to work something out with a wonderful actress named Josephine Bornebusch, who was starring in a huge comedy series called
Solsidan
. A visa was too expensive and we couldn't make it work, but I stayed in touch with Aleksandra, telling her, you know, if anything ever comes up in Sweden please let me know, because I would love the opportunity of working there. That was in 2011. In 2013 I got an email from Aleksandra that Josephine Bornebusch was writing and starring in a show called
Welcome to Sweden
along with Greg Poehler, brother of Amy Poehler and a talented comedian. My dream came true when that summer I flew to Stockholm to shoot. Aside from working with Josephine and Greg, I would be acting opposite the great Swedish actress Lena Olin. I felt like I was returning to my fictional homeland. All along the way there were these strange coincidences. I had filmed a season of
Easy to Assemble
called
Flying Solo,
in which all the IKEA coworkers were flying to Sweden for Midsummer and now I was really flying to Sweden. I arrived as if staged on the eve of Midsummer. I had written about being in the forests of Sweden, and now we were shooting
Welcome to Sweden
in the forest with Lena Olin. I felt that a trip to the mother ship—the original IKEA in Uppsala—was in order. My friend and
Welcome to Sweden
coworker Johan, who also strangely bore a resemblance to Coworker Lance, drove me. I wore my IKEA shirt, because I thought it would be fun to take pictures of me in it, and a shopper immediately came over to me and started asking me questions in Swedish! Johan began to explain to her that I did not actually work at the store and the customer didn't believe him.

During some time off, Aleksandra arranged for me to visit the Swedish Film Institute and tour its archives. To my delight, they showed me that I was in the Swedish archives—a part of Swedish film history. When
Cape Fear
came out, my scene with Robert De Niro was considered too violent to be shown in Sweden, so my scenes had been trimmed. They had the only uncensored print of
Cape Fear
along with some scathing letters from someone named Martin Scorsese denouncing censorship. I was told the debate over the movie led to the end of censorship of all films in Sweden. The other absolutely crazy coincidence was that in
Easy to Assemble
I had written the joke “I'm very big in Sweden … I played an ice-skater in
To Die For
.” Well, it turns out what I wrote was actually true.
To Die For was
a big hit in Sweden, and everywhere I went I was complimented on my ice-skating skills and invited to come back in winter and go sea-skating.

They had a bigger surprise for me. They brought out Ingmar Bergman's private notebooks and journals and handwritten scripts for me to look at. I put on white cotton gloves to hold the script of
Fanny och Alexander
, and they told me, “We've only let one other actress do this, and that was Catherine Deneuve.” Pretty good company, I thought. His journals were filled with drawings and photographs and personal stories. They reminded me of my own journals, which I began because of Roddy McDowall and which were filled with my own recollections and observations. We sat in the room while page after page was translated for me. It was as if Bergman himself were with us.

Season two of
Easy to Assemble
had a scene in which Illeana finds the long-lost journal of a fictional IKEA designer S. Erland Hussen, played by Ed Begley Jr. (Erland was named after Bergman's friend and collaborator Erland Josephson.) Hussen comes to her as a ghost, giving her words of inspiration, and they become the key to her journey of self-discovery. I was holding Ingmar Bergman's journal, holding his thoughts in my hands, and I couldn't help thinking of the line I had written, which he had inspired: “I made something with my hands that came from my heart.” Ingmar Bergman wrote in his autobiography,
The Magic Lantern
, “As a child when I was shut in, I hunted out my torch, directed the beam of light at the wall and pretended I was at the cinema.” I took his journal and held it to my heart, and said a silent thank you.

 

Epilogue

The 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival. I am about to introduce Richard Dreyfuss. He made me wear his hat. I am doing what I love—talking about movies with the folks who made me love them, like Richard.

In 2012 I began working with the Turner Classic Movies network. TCM and its prime-time host, Robert Osborne, have been a constant in my life since they first went on the air, in 1994. TCM has helped expand my knowledge of films and filmmakers, and it has kept me up all night with obscure Bette Davis movies. While I was going to school in New York City, there were many great revival houses where we'd go see classic movies. The Thalia, seen in Woody Allen's
Annie Hall
; the Metro, at Broadway and 99th Street; the Hollywood Twin, where I saw a double bill of
Mean Streets
and
Taxi Driver
; the Regency, where I saw
The Guardsman
—the only film in which Broadway greats Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne starred together. When I saw
The Guardsman,
I was sitting in the fourth row with my roommate Steven and there was only one other person in the theater. When the lights came up, we saw that it was Kevin Kline. Those theaters are gone now, so the opportunity to learn from film legends has slipped away.