Nicole Kidman: A Kind of Life (21 page)

Kubrick worked with Tom and Nicole separately and forbade them to compare notes or to discuss the movie when they were alone. Nicole understood the reason for that to be because he feared that in a three-way situation—which is what it had come down to in their working relationship—two members would find it irresistible to gang up on the third member, perhaps without even meaning to.

Kubrick was a control freak, obsessive and at times paranoid, there is no doubt about that, so Nicole’s explanation is certainly plausible. However, since the director’s tactic of isolating Tom and Nicole and then working with them separately is a well-known mind-control technique, some weight must be given to the possibility that he had a less laudable goal in mind—namely, to experiment with their marriage, for the sake of the movie, the way a researcher would do in a laboratory setting. It is almost as if he was asking Tom and Nicole to examine their own sex lives within the confines of the film, and then to discern between reality and dream-like fantasy.

The most damning evidence against Kubrick lies in the relentless manner in which he pursued the sex scenes between Nicole and Gary Goba. He asked Nicole to do things that he knew damned well would never make it onto film. It was abusive behavior cloaked in a mantle of professional necessity.

“Every time he set up a scene, he said in a teasing voice, ‘What about this Nicole—we’ll put you underneath him, eh?’” recalls Goba. “He was doing stuff like that, antagonizing her. He got a rise out of her for sure. She would say, ‘All right, Stanley, that’s enough.’ She loved him, but he was trying to piss her off in a fun way, but who knows . . .”

In the film, Nicole’s sexual encounters with Goba were only a fantasy, but Tom’s character obsessed over them as if they were real; in real life, Nicole’s encounters with Goba were actual, insofar as intimate touching was concerned, but Tom viewed them as fantasy. Tom had no idea how intimate those sex scenes were, primarily because of Kubrick’s dictum that the couple must refrain from exchanging information—and to this day, Tom is still in the dark about the explicitness of the scenes.

Was it Kubrick’s intent to push Nicole and Tom to the point where they no longer could discern reality from fantasy—and then to document that cinematic experiment for posterity? From that perspective,
Eyes Wide Shut
can be viewed as a documentary on the dissolution of a Hollywood marriage. Diabolically brilliant, if true—but the question remains, was Kubrick clever enough to bring it off?

~ ~ ~

The same month that
Eyes Wide Shut
was released,
Esquire
published a feature story about Nicole that painted a picture of the actress that was devastatingly unflattering. Tom Junod, a Georgia-based feature writer who went to Australia to interview Nicole for the article, walked away with a story that was kinky enough to ensure his own celebrity.

Nicole was most generous with her time, giving the writer a tour of the bridge that her grandfather helped build, drinking with him at a colorful pub called the Glenmore Hotel, and dining with him at a Japanese restaurant. The way Junod told it, Nicole had a bit too much to drink and got a wee bit tipsy .  .  . well, drunk.

On Junod’s last night in Sydney. Nicole insisted on dropping by his hotel to tell him goodbye. According to Junod, when she arrived at his room she glanced at his computer screen and then climbed into his bed to get “comfortable.” No sooner had he climbed into the bed to lay beside her, than the telephone rang. It was Tom and he was looking for his wife, since he and the children were waiting for her at a Chinese restaurant and everyone was getting hungry.

“Yeah, Tom,” Junod answered. “She’s right here, in my hotel room. In my bed.”

There was a pause, according to Junod, and Tom said, “Yeah, in your dreams, buddy.”

With that, Junod held the telephone out in Nicole’s direction and asked her to confirm that she was, indeed, in his bed.

“I’m afraid so, darling,” Nicole called out to her husband. “I’m afraid I’m in his bed at this very moment.”

If true—and he did seem to suggest that he and Nicole were having an intimate  encounter of some kind—it was an odd thing for Junod to write about in his article. So odd, that Junod himself became the subject of media attention. In an interview with
USA Today,
he seemed to back away from suggesting a sexual encounter. He explained it by saying, “The story is and was a flirtation. I was flirting with her, not only when reporting, but when writing. It’s that genre of celebrity journalism. And she flirted back. I just think we kind of liked each other. Of course, it was professional.”

Nicole was oddly silent about the article. After the stresses that she underwent making
Eyes Wide Shut
, dealing with the real-life jealousies and insecurities that had crept into her marriage, Junod’s article was the last thing she needed in her life, even if it was written in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek style. No one knows for certain, since neither she nor Tom has ever discussed the article publicly, but it surely must have caused a rife.

Emotionally, Nicole and Tom were depleted. The publicity surrounding
Eyes Wide Shut
was nearly as draining as making the film itself. The marriage of Hollywood’s most perfect couple was headed for trouble, not because of the article, but because of an accumulation of marital stresses. The article merely demonstrated how truly needy Nicole was at that time in her life.

Even before the release of Kubrick’s work, Tom had retreated into another film—this time into a comic drama titled
Magnolia
.  Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the film examines nine lives in the course of one day, all taking place in San Fernando Valley, California. Tom took the supporting role of Frank T. J. Mackey, the leader of a cultish, self-help group of macho womanizers who want to improve their game. Mackey’s advice is to “seduce and destroy.”

When the film was released in December 1999, Tom received rave reviews for the manner in which he had developed the character (was he listening more and more to Nicole?). Writing in the
San Francisco Chronicle
, Bob Graham had praise for the actor: “The role of Frank T. J. Mackey demands a mesmerizing performance, and Cruise delivers one.” Agreeing with that assessment was the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which nominated him for an Oscar (he didn’t win).  

Chapter 8

NIC GAMBLES ON ‘MOULIN ROUGE’

When Nicole first read the script for
Birthday Girl
, what most impressed her was that she was unable to predict what was going to happen on the next page. She saw the story as being character-driven, one in which she could lose herself and adopt a new persona: in this case, as a Russian mail-order bride. What also impressed her about the project was that it initially would be filmed in Sydney, which meant she could take the children and join Tom while he was shooting
Mission Impossible II
.

Nicole did have one reservation about making the film. It would require her to learn Russian, at least enough to make her character convincing, and she was not certain she could bring that off. Even so, she threw herself into it, learning not only the Russian language, but the Russian attitude as well, even though she was still physically exhausted by the emotional investment she had put into
Eyes Wide Shut
and
The Blue Room
.

There was also another reason for her to undertake a taxing project—it would take her mind off of her faltering marriage. She did what men have done for centuries when their marriages take a turn for the worse: she became a workaholic.

Not unhappy with that attitude was London-born director Jez Butterworth, who had directed only one other film before signing on to do
Birthday Girl
. The fact that he had written the script would help him with his duties as a director, but what he needed most of all was an experienced lead actress who would push herself to the max. Despite her glamorous image outside the movie industry, within the industry Nicole was known for her obsessive attention to detail and her willingness to put pressure on herself that no self-respecting director would ever inflict upon her (Sidney Kubrick, the only exception).

Starring opposite Nicole was British actor, Ben Chaplin, who plays a lonely bank teller named John who attempts to put some excitement into his drab life by ordering a Russian bride from an Internet dating service called “From Russia With Love.”

The movie begins with John arriving at the airport to pick up his new bride, a dark-haired woman with excessive eye makeup who goes by the name of Nadia. To John, a seasoned introvert, Nadia seems shy and forlorn, perhaps even homesick, so as he drives her to his suburban home, he tries to make polite conversation with her. He soon becomes suspicious after she answers “yes” to every question and he asks her, as a test, if she is a giraffe, to which she gleefully answers “yes.” Minutes later, she hangs her head out the car window and vomits.

When they arrive at his house, the first thing he does is place a telephone call to the dating service to tell them that they have made a terrible mistake. He had ordered an English speaking bride and they had sent the wrong order. After no one answered the telephone, he left a voicemail plea for someone to call him. It was, he explains in a desperate voice, an emergency.       

  No one with the dating service ever returns his calls, so he settles into sort of a routine with Nadia. He gives her a Russian/English dictionary and tries to make the most of what he sees as a bad situation. She responds by giving him sex of such intensity and variety that he soon forgets his reservations about having her in his home.

Not long after Nadia arrives, her cousin Alexei (played by Vincent Cassel) shows up with his friend Yuri (played by Mathieu Kassovitz). Things go well for a while, but when John asks them to leave, Yuri goes berserk and threatens to hurt Nadia if John does not pay him money. To get the money, John robs his own bank, carting out bundles of bills in two guitar cases. Once Yuri has the money, Nadia starts speaking English and showing affection for Yuri. As it turns out, John’s relationship with Nadia was all part of a money-making scam. Of course, the money soon becomes secondary to resolving the conflict of who gets the girl—and therein lies the heart of the drama.

Making the movie was physically less demanding on Nicole than other movies she had made, but emotionally it was a challenge. To do it properly she knew she had to not only change her appearance, but also had to change her speech.

During rehearsals, she showed up each morning with the same comment: “Oh, shit! I can’t do this!” Cassel and Kassovitz were in much the same position. Both men were born in France and they had to learn Russian the same way Nicole did.

On their first day of rehearsals, the two men showed up together and asked Nicole, half jokingly, if she had learned her lines in Russian yet.

“Oh, yes,” she later told
Interview.
“I’ve learned all my Russian. I have an accent which is from the suburbs to the south of Moscow.”

The two men turned pale and looked at each other, one saying to the other, “Shit! We’re in trouble!”

Ben Chaplin had problems of his own starring opposite Nicole, for it meant sitting around naked with her for long periods of time between takes. Recounted Chaplin: “Nicole and I would look at each other and say the most God-awful, stupid things like, ‘Can you believe this weather?’ ‘Do you think they’ll serve the good fish for lunch?’ It’s almost like being in a doctor’s office. You can’t wait until it’s over, even if it is Nicole Kidman across a bed from you.”

Production on
Birthday Girl
wrapped in 2000, but the film was not released until January 2002. Critics were not dazzled by the movie. Wrote Joe Leydon of the
San Francisco Examiner:
“Nicole Kidman is radiantly beautiful, even while dressed in frumpy Russian frocks and wearing enough eye shadow to suggest an unusually sexy racoon .  .  .
Birthday Girl
may be intended as a romantic thriller, but it is sorely lacking in romance and thrills. It’s the closest thing to a totally useless movie that you’ll find at megaplexes this weekend.”

The New York Times’s
critic Elvis Mitchell was impressed by Nicole’s “high-hurdle sprinter’s figure,” but found the plot insubstantial: “By the end, all
Birthday Girl
does is toss off a few sparks. It doesn’t generate enough down-and-dirty firepower to burst into flames.”

The
Sydney Morning Herald
was more encouraging. Commenting on the criticism that Nicole seldom seems to connect emotionally with her male leads, critic Paul Byrnes found her on-screen relationship with Chaplin refreshing: “The tagline would have echoed that famous earlier one, ‘Garbo talks.’ As in ‘Kidman loves!’ She gets to show a tenderness we’ve rarely seen, but it’s combined with the comic skills we saw in
To Die For
. It’s a great part and a great performance.”

When Nicole went on the
Tonight Show with Jay Leno
to promote the film, she had very little to say about it. Mostly she talked about how frightened she was to play a Russian—the main fear being that she would fall flat on her face. She continued that line of thought with an interview for the
Today Show
: “I tend to get sent these things that are different, unusual, which is what you want as an actor .  .  . But I did have trepidation when they said it is a Russian girl. I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I am going to be able to pull that off. You can look like an absolute fool, an actor trying to speak another language—but I threw myself into it.”  

~ ~ ~

Even before Nicole “threw herself” into
Birthday Girl
, she was obsessing about another movie named
Moulin Rouge
. One evening, during the New York production of
The Blue
Room, a bouquet of long-stemmed red roses with Nicole’s name on it was delivered backstage. The roses caught her attention because, believe it or not, no one had ever given her long-stemmed red roses.
Were they from Tom, a reaffirmation of his love for her?
No, they were from Australian movie director Baz Luhrmann, who wanted something from her. The note attached to the flowers read: “I have this great character. She sings, she dances, and then she dies.”

 In a strange sort of way,
that
was the way Nicole saw her own life, so how could she not respond in a favorable manner to Luhrmann’s teaser. She knew him, but not very well (a decade ago they had worked together guest-editing the Australian edition of
Vogue
), so she called him and asked to see the script.

There was no script, Luhrmann explained, merely a booklet composed of photographs, drawings, and captions. There was one other bit of information she should be aware of before accepting his offer, he explained—the movie was a musical and she would be asked to actually sing, not lip-snyc to another woman’s voice.

Nicole liked to sing—she sang to her children often, although they usually asked her to stop—but she had no idea if she would be able to sing professionally. Nonetheless, she readily said yes, figuring she would simply rely on her innate ability to mimic with deadly accuracy, only to be told the second surprise of the conversation—namely, that all the actors chosen for the movie would be asked to go to Sydney, without compensation, to rehearse for three to four months at his headquarters, a former insane asylum. How could Nicole possibly resist an offer like that?

Luhrmann was not so much eccentric as he was headstrong to recreate the vision he had for the movie. He first got the idea while visiting India in 1994 to research an opera. He went to see a locally produced movie and was fascinated at the way the director had blended corny comedy with drama and then set it off with music. It was totally off-the-wall, but everyone in the theater, himself included, was riveted to the screen, wondering what outlandish event would next appear.

When he returned to Sydney, he told his staff he planned to do a movie unlike any other ever done. It would be a musical with a serious plot line, but the characters would all be larger-than-life caricatures that would be surrounded by lavish sets bathed in vibrant hues of red and blue. He didn’t have a plot in mind yet, but he already knew that he wanted the actors to sing live on stage—and he wanted them to sing popular contemporary songs that would be recognizable to the public. It would be a musical unlike anything Hollywood had ever envisioned.

No one doubted Luhrmann’s ability to bring the idea to life. His 1996 production of
Romeo and Juliet
had been universally hailed and had established him as a serious filmmaker with a grand vision who could reshape the familiar into something new and extraordinary. 

Once he decided to make the movie, Luhrmann had to decide on a story line. “I wanted to deal with the Orphean myth: ‘Idealistic young man with a gift descends into the underworld looking for idealistic perfect love, finds her, tries to rescue her from that underworld. He makes a very human mistake, loses that love forever and is scarred,’” he explained to
Movieline
. “That myth is about that moment that comes for us all when you realize that some relationships, no matter how perfect, cannot be. People die. Doors close. You won’t always be young. You go through that journey, and in place of the gifts of youth come the gifts of spiritual growth. You’re bigger inside.”

Where better for that vision to take place than in a nineteenth century Parisian nightclub, where money could buy literally anything, including love, for a reasonable price. Once Luhrmann had the vision and the setting for his motion picture, which he decided to call
Moulin Rouge
, all that remained was to people his fantasy with actors who could make his characters come to life.

To do that, he spent three months going door to door, looking for just the right actors. For the role of Harold Zidler, the nightclub owner, he chose veteran character actor Jim Broadbent. Jim Leguizamo was asked to play Toulouse-Lautrec, and Richard Roxburgh was tapped for the role of the womanizing Duke of Monroth.

The male and female leads were the last cast. He pretty much considered every male and female actor that was available. Catherine Zeta-Jones was high on his list to play Satine, the ambitious courtesan torn between getting ahead in life and finding true love, primarily because she had enjoyed a successful career in musical comedy in London, but, after pondering every angle, he ended up passing over her because he felt that she was not emotionally eccentric enough to be convincing. Nicole attracted his attention because he felt she had both a girl-next-door quality and a dangerous, unpredictable quality about her. When he saw her electric performance in
The Blue Room
, he was certain she was perfect for the role of Satine.

Heath Ledger was the front-runner for a long time for the role of Christian, the penniless writer, but, in the end, he decided that the nineteen-year-old was simply too young to do the character justice. Instead, he went with Ewan McGregor, whom he had auditioned in the mid-1990s to play Mercutio in
Romeo and Juliet.