Nicole Kidman: A Kind of Life (9 page)

The Church of Scientology is Hubbard’s vision of religion in a modern, humanist context. It is based on several principles, including the belief that Man is an immortal spiritual being whose experience extends well beyond a single lifetime. Scientology believes that humans are basically good and can find salvation by attaining brotherhood with the “universe.” “Scientology holds in common with all great religions the dream of peace on Earth and salvation for man,” explains the church’s literature. “What is new about Scientology is that it offers a precise path for bringing about spiritual improvement in the here and now and a way to accomplish it with absolute certainty.”

Scientologists believe in God, but not necessarily the God found in the Old and New Testaments. “Scientology is not a dogmatic religion in which one is asked to believe anything on faith,” says church literature. “An individual discovers for himself that Scientology works by applying its principles and observing or experiencing the results.”

Scientology is a religion that Tom Cruise took to, almost immediately, in his mid-twenties. The main attraction to him seems to be its philosophy that it can help repair any difficulty and overcome any adversity. “Life pounds you—you know what I mean?” Tom once told
Vanity Fair
writer Evgenia Peretz. “You come across losses. All of a sudden something happens and how you feel like you cannot go forward or it invalidates you . .  . Scientology has helped me be able to figure out tools to understand exactly what a problem is, and how to overcome those problems.”

 Tom wasted no time early in their relationship exposing Nicole to the teachings of the Church of Scientology, and she promised to keep an open mind about it. In the beginning, there were rumors that she had to embrace Scientology in order to marry Tom, rumors she steadfastly denied. “No way,” she told
Rolling Stone
. “I would never have married him if that was it. That would’ve been forcing me to do something I didn’t want to do. He and I allow ourselves to be who we are. Am I someone following one philosophy? No, but there’s parts of Scientology that are great.”

Nicole did not go into detail about the aspects of the religion that she felt were “great,” but one of them certainly must have been the way in which church members network with each other. Her first glimpse of that would have been while she and Tom were filming
Days of Thunder
, because fellow church member John Travolta showed up to pal around with Tom. The second could have been when church member Dustin Hoffman recommended her for a role in his next motion picture,
Billy Bathgate.
 

~ ~ ~

Based on the novel by E. L. Doctorow,
Billy Bathgate
seemed to have all the ingredients for a blockbuster hit. Americans have a long-standing fascination with organized crime families and it does not take much in the way of a story line to entice them into a movie theater to cinematically commune with the likes of Al “Scarface” Capone, Carlos “Little Man” Marcello, or Benjamin “Bugsy” Seigel.

In the case of
Billy Bathgate
, the focus is on mobster Dutch Schultz, a New York nightclub owner who came under the watchful eye of U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Dewey, one of the toughest prosecutors in the nation. When he learned he was the target of a federal investigation, Schultz put out a contract on Dewey, a clear violation of the Mafia’s code of conduct (prosecutors were off limits, for obvious reasons).

The hitman went straight to Mafia Godfather Charlie Luciano and told him about Schultz’s plans. Fearful that Schultz was out control, Luciano met with other New York crime families, all of whom agreed that putting out a contract on Schultz was the only solution. In October 1935, Schultz was dining at a New Jersey restaurant with three associates when gunmen cut them down as they sat at the dinner table.

Billy Bathgate
is the coming-of-age story of a young man of the same name who signs on to be a flunkie for Schultz during the time period covered by the federal investigation. The mobster’s criminal activities are secondary in the story to the youth’s discovery of the jaded and morally gnarled world that surrounds him.

To bring the story to life, producers Arlene Donovan and Robert F. Colesberry hired director Robert Benton, who had demonstrated that he had box-office savvy with hits such as
Kramer vs. Kramer
and
Still of the Night
, both of which he also wrote
.
Actually, it was as a screenwriter that he was best known, with hits such as
Bonnie and Clyde
,
Superman,
and
What’s Up, Doc?
With that stellar background, it is a mystery why he asked Tom Stoppard to write the screenplay for
Billy Bathgate
.

   Dustin Hoffman was asked to play the role of Dutch Schultz. He had come off a string of duds—
Istar
(1987) and
Dick Tracy
(1990)—and box-office hits such as
Tootsie, Kramer vs. Kramer, and All the President’s Men
(1976). To some movie observers, Hoffman was an enigma, primarily because he sometimes seemed reckless in the judgment he showed during script selection. In truth, he is simply disrespectful of the Hollywood tradition that holds that motion picture stars should play it safe once they have reached a certain level of success. Hoffman likes to roll the dice.

Chosen to play the title role of Billy Bathgate was Loren Dean, a twenty-one-year-old veteran of only two movies,
Plain Clothes
and
Say Anything.
He had just the right amount of fresh-faced, John-Boy innocence to make the character believable.

Bruce Willis was added for an important cameo role as Bo Weinberg, Drew Preston’s first gangster boyfriend. Although his screen time was slight, the character sets the tone for the remainder of the story and serves as a point of reference.

For the role of Drew Preston, Schultz’s girlfriend, someone was needed who could be believable as a society-oriented married woman who is attracted to the adrenaline rushes associated with organized crime. She had to be beautiful, careless with her love, manipulative, and speak with a Park Avenue accent. Nicole Kidman thought she could handle that role just fine. So did the producers and directors who auditioned her for the part, except for the accent. After the reading, Hoffman called his pal Tom to tell him about Nicole’s audition. “Ah, man,” he intoned. “Where did
she
come from?”

Benton gave Nicole the name of a voice coach and told her she had two weeks to lose her Aussie accent. Privately, he was skeptical she would be able to do it. When she returned two weeks later, speaking flawless “American,” he could not stop bragging on her. “She was phenomenal,” he told
Cosmopolitan.
“Her American accent was perfect. After a long day of shooting, though, she’d revert right back and speak in her natural Australian accent, and the crew was amazed. They asked me, ‘Why does Nicole talk like an Aussie? Is it some kind of joke?’”

Billy Bathgate
begins with Dutch taking Bo out on a tugboat to kill him. As Bo’s girlfriend, Nicole makes her first appearance in the movie as New York socialite Drew Preston. She sits and watches as Bo sits tied to a chair, his feet resting in hardening cement. Also present is Billy Bathgate. There is a flashback to show how Billy got involved with the mob. It began simply enough, with Dutch spotting him in the street juggling balls. He tips him and Billy uses the money to buy a pistol.

Nicole’s first nude scene in an American movie occurs when Drew is taken home after the murder. She knows better than to tell anyone what she witnessed on the tugboat, especially her homosexual husband who has his own after-hours agenda. Now an accessory to the crime, she does the only safe thing and becomes Dutch’s girlfriend.

When Dutch is charged with racketeering in upstate New York, he takes Drew and Billy with him to attend the trial. Shortly after arriving in town, Dutch goes to a local bank to deposit a bag of cash. He introduces Billy to the banker as his “prodigy.” After the banker leaves the room, Drew corrects Dutch. “If I make a tiny criticism, do you promise not to get all sulky and pout?” she asks. “It’s protégé.”

“What did I say?” asked Dutch.

“Prodigy. It means child genius.”

So much for gangster rap 1930s-style.

At first uncertain why Dutch wanted him along, Billy soon learns that his main job is to baby-sit Drew. In one of the more effective scenes, Billy takes Drew out into the country to get her and himself out of Dutch’s sight. She finds a waterfall and sits on the ledge, high above a pool of water. She asks Billy how it was when Bo died.

In a flashback, the scene switches to the moment Bo is pushed off the boat. As he sinks, there is a flash back to the present, where a nude Drew has jumped into the pool. She sinks beneath the water, just as Bo sinks. When she pops out of the water, Billy helps her into her dress.

“Did he really ask you to protect me?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says.

“I mean . . .  that he would think that I couldn’t take care of myself. And you promised him you would?”

“Yes.”

“Do you always keep your promises?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

Drew turns up the heat on Billy by seducing him. He tells her she does not appreciate the position she is in—“You’re Schultz’s girl.”

“No, I’m not his girl. He’s my gangster.”

Later, in bed at the hotel, Drew says, “Poor Billy Bathgate. You made a promise to protect me. I’m not making it easy for you, am I?”

“No mam, you’re not.”

Toward the end of the movie, when Billy says about Drew, “She’s not like ordinary people. She’s not scared of anything,” he might well have been talking about Nicole herself. Although the part of the girlfriend was one that she was weary of playing, she never lost sight of the strengths of her character. There was little room for character development as written, but she pushed it to the limits allowed within the story.

The release of the movie was delayed until November 1, 1991, due to decisions made during editing that some scenes needed to be re-shot. Reviews were not especially kind. Wrote Rita Kempley for the
Washington Post
: “In the annals of crime-related entertainment, the adaptation of E. L. Doctorow’s
Billy Bathgate
ranks up there with Geraldo’s TV special on ‘The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault.’ When thrown open to our prying eyes, the picture, like the vault, is full of nothing but stale air.”

Also displeased with the film was Jay Carr, who wrote for the
Boston Globe
: “Every season there’s one big-budget movie that attracts disaster rumors like a magnet. This year, it’s
Billy Bathgate
, with its re-shot endings and postponed opening dates. [It] isn’t a disaster exactly. It’s more like handsome taxidermy. Director Robert Benton fills the screen with gorgeously burnished pictures, Tom Stoppard’s screenplay transfers the novel’s action and many of its lines efficiently, and the production values are first-rate. But the film mostly just sits there.”

Most critics were impressed with Nicole’s acting, but some questioned whether her character should have been played by an older actress (Nicole was just a year older than Loren Dean, who was supposed to be of high-school age). One critic,
Rolling Stone’s
Peter Travers, pointed out what he thought was a Disney first—a glimpse of Nicole’s pubic hair.

~ ~ ~

Even before
Billy Bathgate
was released, Nicole experienced a sudden halt in her career. The phone stopped ringing with offers. News media interest in her seemed to focus on her marriage to Tom and not her career. When she did receive attention, it was borderline negative, as if she had done something wrong by coming to America and marrying Tom.

Rumors surfaced again about Tom’s sexual orientation. Hollywood gossips said the marriage was little more than a devil’s bargain, whereby he got respectability and she got a career by riding on his coattails.

 “I went through a period when I didn’t get any work for a year,” Nicole told
Good Weekend
, an Australian magazine. “It was a very tough time for me and I wanted to go back to Australia, but Tom’s career was in America.”

Nicole had to decide whether her first priority was her career or her marriage. She came down solidly on the side of her marriage, discrediting her detractors with the single-minded zeal with which she embraced her new life with Tom.