There and Back Again (11 page)

“Don't do it. You'll hate it.”

He was right—and he was wrong. I accepted the job not only because it would allow me to be in the Los Angeles area when my daughter was born (in November 1996), and because it was, I thought, a small amount of work for reasonable remuneration, but also because I wanted to test myself, to see if I could acquit myself admirably while working alongside one of the most inspired and notorious taskmasters in Hollywood. Whatever else might transpire, I figured I'd at least learn a lot from Warren so I made the decision to do it. I don't blame Warren for anything that happened. I think he was exactly as I thought he would be, but I did suffer on that production. And the suffering was mostly of my own doing.

If you watch
Bulworth,
you'll notice that I'm barely in the movie, which doesn't really bother me; I understand the reason. I don't think Warren respected my capacity as an actor or an artist, and the fact that he didn't, coupled with my own hurt feelings, created a kind of sour mixture on the set. The responsibility for inspiration was on both of us; the implied understanding when I agreed to do the picture was that we would both be inspired. So it was disappointing in terms of output. In a sense, merely by watching him, I was inspired every day, but what I was writing and what he was capturing on screen were all overshadowed by Warren and his megalomania.

Of course, it was his movie. He was the writer, director, producer, and star; I was contractually merely a piece of casting. It was Warren's prerogative to use my acting talents as much or as little as he saw fit. The contribution of any writing on my part was a private understanding between Warren and me. This dynamic exists a lot and shouldn't be condemned by the Writer's Guild or its arbitrators. It goes to the notion that a healthy creative environment should allow for inspiration from all quarters to the betterment of the film. Credit and remuneration can impede creativity, and the balance is rightfully left to the development of trust between artists. To that end, I went willingly into Warren's world to see what the sky looked like.

There was one particular day when I watched with what can only be termed immense fascination as Warren staged a close-up of himself. Vittorio Storaro, one of the most brilliant and accomplished cinematographers ever to light a scene (his credits include
Last Tango in Paris, Apocalypse Now,
and
Reds
), was shooting it, and I remember being fascinated with Warren's capacity for introspection in the middle of this huge multimillion-dollar movie. Afterward, I quizzed him about it. I had seen
Dick Tracy
and loved it, and so I asked him about how he had put that movie together and how it had led to
Bulworth.
Everything on
Dick Tracy
, he explained, was planned to the inch—it was the exact opposite of
Bulworth. Dick Tracy
was an artistic endeavor, to be sure, but it was intended to be a big-budget, mainstream popular success.
Bulworth
was different, almost experimental in nature. Here Warren was using his stardom in service of the promotion of certain liberal ideas; to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how he even got the studio (Fox) to pay for it. I believe it had something to do with Warren forgoing bonus money on an earlier film in exchange for the right to make a smaller, more personal film. Or agreeing not to sue the studio and forcing it to incur big legal costs. Only Warren and the studio really know. Either way, the movie was smart and in some ways courageous, and it spoke volumes about Warren's commitment to his craft and to his personal ideology. He is a formidable man and artist.

As far as my acting and writing and how I was perceived by Warren, however … well, that was a different story. For example, when it came to the letter of the contract, Warren was utterly unforgiving. The production owned me;
Warren
owned me, and he wanted me in close proximity—on the set, in the green room, or in my dressing room—all day, every day, no matter what. I was one of the colors on his palette; he wanted to have the freedom to go to that color whenever the mood struck him, and frankly I resented it. On a purely human and interpersonal level, I thought it was rude and inconsiderate, mainly because I didn't think he had any intention of using whatever talent I could supposedly bring to bear. Warren abused the privilege of having me at his disposal. I had signed a contract giving him power over where my physical body would be, on the premise that he would be respectful of it, and he was not respectful.

Over time, as it became apparent that I would play no major part in the construction of
Bulworth
, my frustration grew. As did my body. Warren had a very small dressing room by movie-star standards, but it was substantial compared to the tiny cubicles assigned to some of the actors, myself included. These were painfully small, private changing stations in which you couldn't spend more than a few seconds without suffering bouts of embarrassment. Whether this was by design (to discourage performers from hiding out in their dressing rooms) or simply a prudent cost-saving measure, I don't know; I do know that I, like most of the actors, tended to gravitate toward the motor home that served as the cast's green room.

The green room was a fairly lavish setup, with satellite television, gourmet food prepared by a cadre of chefs, and an assortment of newspapers and magazines. The green room was where Warren spent most of his off-set time, too, and it was indeed a place where interesting things happened. He invited all kinds of movers and shakers and people of cultural, artistic, and political influence. I saw them come and go, because I basically sat my widening ass in a chair not far from him, and said to myself,
If Warren is going to have me here, he's going to have to see me every time he walks in and out of this room.
I was determined not to be out of his sight. He'd developed a pattern of telling his assistant directors to find particular actors and bring them to the set, and I didn't want to make it convenient for him not to need me. (One of the assistant directors, by the way, was Frank Capra III, grandson of the idealistic director of countless Hollywood classics, including
It's a Wonderful Life
and
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
. It would be absolutely awesome when Warren would shout, “Frank Capra!” People would stop in their tracks, and you'd find yourself thinking.
I'm a part of Hollywood history—this is so cool!
)

But those were small and fleeting moments of joy, of legitimate creative wonder. By and large, for me
Bulworth
was a bizarre and discouraging experience, a marathon of boredom punctuated by strange and humbling interactions with the director and star.

“You should be writing your speech,” Warren would admonish me from time to time, when he'd see me sitting in the green room, reading a book for some class I was taking at UCLA. “Remember, what's in here” (he'd tap me on the chest, over my heart) “is more important than what's in here” (then he'd tap me on the forehead).

“I know, I know. I'm working on it.”

But I wasn't. Not really. I remember thinking,
You know, Warren, if I had even an iota of faith that you would honor my thoughts or contributions, I'd allow myself to go there. I'd plumb the depths of my soul. But you basically just want me to clean up a mess so you don't have to look at it.
That's how frustrated and angry I'd become. One day, though, for reasons I still don't quite understand (perhaps out of some pathetic need for approval, or maybe just to prove I was right), I surrendered to Warren's will and went off with my laptop. And I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. In a single, frantic, cathartic session I produced a seven-page, single-spaced treatise on the character of Gary C-Span, his importance to the film
Bulworth
, and what I believed Warren Beatty was trying to accomplish. These weren't pages from a script, but more of an intellectual diatribe—an attempt to demonstrate my passion for art and ideas.

Did it work? Of course not.

On the day I presented the pages to Warren, we were sitting together in the makeup room. Warren had just finished eating lunch and was expressing an interest in returning to the buffet table for a refill. With a wry smile he turned to me, held up his plate, and said comedically, for he isn't really a tyrant or a bully, “Sean, do you suppose there is a minion about?”

Now, I believe this was Warren's way of jokingly pointing out that on movie sets there are always people milling about, people whose job descriptions can never quite be pinned down. He wasn't really asking for a minion because he felt he was entitled to it—in fact, he wasn't asking for a minion at all—but he was enjoying the kind of self-awareness that comes from knowing that he is a man who does indeed have minions. When push comes to shove, I believe Warren Beatty is as in touch with the common man as any multimillionaire actor/director/mogul could be. And yet, he did say, “Is there a minion about?” Which I find rather amusing.

“I'll tell you what, Warren,” I said, taking the plate from his hands. “I'll go get you some more food, on the condition that you let me read my pages to you when I get back.”

“No, no, you don't have to get me food, Sean,” he said at first. But I interrupted him.

“That's all right. I want to.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

So I retrieved a heaping plate of food and placed it in front of Warren, and began performing my rambling diatribe. I was nervous, so I stumbled and stammered a bit, but I got through it quickly enough, and I was pleased that he actually seemed to be paying attention, maybe even taking me and my words seriously. In all candor, I thought it was not only pretty well written, but also reasonably astute; it was a celebration of Warren and his idiosyncrasies, as well as an indictment of some of those things. I thought I'd found a way to make my point and comment on the character and the story, even though I hadn't found a way to integrate it seamlessly into the story. Never mind that none of us had been issued a script! Basically, this was performance art, a weird combination of improvisation and detailed speech reading, which was precisely the way Warren seemed to like to work. By the time I finished, I was sweating and breathing hard; my heart was racing. I looked at him and waited for some type of reaction.

“Well?”

He paused, poked at his food, and said nonchalantly, “Not bad. Why don't you try another version where you focus more on the girls?”

The “girls” were two African American women who, like Gary C-Span, were part of Bulworth's ever-expanding entourage. The point, I later discovered as the movie came into focus, was that Warren was thinking about trading on a kind of hippie sexuality, something reminiscent of the spirit of the sixties. You could see him looking for it, looking for
something,
but apparently I'd missed the mark in my presentation.

As I've reflected on it over the years, I've come to think Warren might have had in mind a sort of comedic trio. Perhaps if there had been more of a spark between my personality and the personality of the “girls,” Warren might have seen some value in cutting to us as a kind of miscegenation or menàge comic-relief element. But I didn't allow myself to go there, and I don't think my personality had evolved enough to “play” in an improvisational way with them. One of the highlights of the shoot for me was making friends with some of the other actors. Notably, Josh Malina did just the kind of sketch or character comedy that Warren was looking for, and his stuff is rightfully all over the movie.

But let's get back to me standing in front of Warren, having presented him with my outpouring of creative writing. I was demonstrably hurt by his reaction, almost as though I expected him to jump out of his chair and offer to relinquish his credit to me.

“Try another version?” I asked incredulously.

I didn't bother. Instead, I just sat there all day long, every day, feeling undervalued and underappreciated, eating myself into a stupor, getting fat and angry and depressed, much as I had during the filming of
Encino Man
. The funny thing was, eventually I came to understand my character. There wasn't much written for him, but that was typical of Warren. He wanted his actors to be totally naturalistic and comfortable, to allow performances and stories to grow organically. The weird thing about my situation, though, is that Gary C-Span is a pivotal, if largely observant character; he's there, hanging around, the entire movie. He's following, videotaping, watching. But in terms of interpreting what's going on, he does nothing; so I ended up in this odd position where I was there and present on the set, but not really focused on the movie. The result was a kind of amused reconciliation: while trying to be ready for the possibility that Warren might want to shoot a close-up with me, I had to accept the notion that my role would be reduced to a cameo.

It was a unique Hollywood experience, trying to not just endure, but to also honor, the opportunity that had been presented to me. I fully accept responsibility for the way it turned out. I know that if I had been working out every day, if I had factored into the equation some cardiovascular exercise and had been disciplined about how I ate and transformed myself into the good-looking guy that's (sometimes) within me, not only would my attitude have been better, and not only would I have felt more creative, but Warren might have used that energy in a way that would have yielded something more valuable in terms of the final product. So, to a certain extent, I'm culpable for my own frustration, as well as the fact that Gary is little more than a shadow in the movie
Bulworth
.

Power, I've discovered, is an interesting thing, and sometimes the biggest challenge is knowing whether you have any control over a situation. Warren Beatty is like a Hollywood supernova: you can get burned right out of existence being anywhere near him. If you don't know how to protect yourself from guys like him, or how to work with guys like him, or how to survive despite guys like him, you'll have a short, forgettable career.