Rebels on the Backlot (62 page)

But the drama is not over. The car scene takes several more hours to shoot, and as the sun fades, the accumulated tension erupts. Ms. Tomlin begins shouting at Mr. Russell: she is unhappy with the way she looks. She wants to try the scene a different way. She taunts him with a few expletives and curses at the other actors too. Their patience worn, the other actors laugh at her outburst.

Later, unfolding himself from the back seat of the Chevrolet, Mark Wahlberg jokes that his next project will be a nice, easy action film.

July 31, 2003: Candid Camera

The production has moved from the dried-up swamp to the set of the detectives’ office. It is hot and cramped, and the hour is getting late. To pass the time while a shot is set up, Mr. Russell treats the crew to a description of a baby passing through the birth canal.

And then Ms. Tomlin is berating Mr. Russell again.

This time, the director turns on her angrily, calling her the crudest word imaginable, in front of the actors and crew. He shrieks “I wrote this role for you! I fought for you!” Mr. Russell ends his tirade by sweeping his arm across a nearby table cluttered with production paraphernalia. He storms off the set and back on again, continually shouting. Then he locks himself in his office, refusing to return. After an uncomfortable, set-wide pause, Ms. Tomlin goes in to apologize, and Mr. Russell returns to the shoot.

Unbeknownst to both of them, a member of the crew has videotaped his tirade. The recording makes its way around the Hollywood talent agencies. Asked about the incident later, Mr. Russell says “Sure, I wish I hadn’t done that. But Lily and I are fine.” For her part, Ms. Tomlin admits that both she and Mr. Russell lost control. “It’s not a practice on his
part or my part,” she says. “I’d rather have someone human and available and raw and open. Don’t give me someone cold, or cut off, or someone who considers themselves dignified.” This must be the Zen part.

September 4, 2003: Roller Coaster Party

The shoot finished earlier in the day, at 3:15
A.M.
—miraculously on schedule and on budget. For the wrap party on the Santa Monica Pier, the
Huckabees
production has taken over an amusement park along the Pacific, where Dustin Hoffman is chatting with his old pal, the producer Robert Evans, flanked by a couple of towering women whose assets spill out of their halter tops.

Mr. Russell is wandering around the pier in a gray suit and blue pinstripe shirt, unbuttoned, with a blinking red heart necklace slung around his neck. Everyone else is playing arcade games and riding the roller coaster under a gentle black September sky. But the director seems to be in a kind of dazed dream state, and has been that way for about a week, he says. Usually, he says, ending a film brings a mixture of sadness and relief, but this time it’s only sadness. He seems to be mourning the end of the free-wheeling universe of the
Huckabees
set; now he has to retreat to the solitude of an editing room to figure out exactly what his movie is. “I told you,” he tells a visitor, as if wondering how one could forget something he’d said in passing two months earlier. “This was the happiest experience of my life.”

But there are murmurings of confusion as to how the movie will turn out, even among actors who trust Mr. Russell. “I hope he has all the pieces,” observes Talia Shire, leaving the party with her son, Jason Schwartzman.

July 26, 2004: Reality Check

It is a balmy night on the lot of Twentieth Century Fox, and the Little Fox Theater is packed with leading members of the cast, some crew, several agents, and friends. Dustin Hoffman and his wife and children and their friends have come; so has a still golden-haired Jude Law and his parents. The theater hums with anticipation: it is Mr. Russell’s first film in five years; he’s locked himself in the editing room for an unusually long time; and though almost no one has yet seen the film, it is already being mentioned as a nominee for a best picture Oscar.

A half-hour late, Mr. Russell walks to the front of the theater wearing a blue suit, a red and white striped shirt, and sneakers. Compared to the
manic exuberance he displayed on set, he seems relatively subdued. “Wake up, it’s a comedy,” he announces, even though his audience of insiders presumably knows as much. “We’re going to have an amphetamine mist,” he tells the crowd, playing with a strand of hair.

No one—even those involved with the film—knows quite what to expect from it. What they see is a movie that is, well, dense. Emotionally dense, and intellectually so; jammed with ideas both profound and prosaic, thick with rapid-fire dialogue about human beings and the use of petroleum. But it’s not quite the movie they shot. A few major scenes—like the one in the car, which was supposed to explain the entire movie—have been cut.

As people file out of the theater, trying to find the words to describe the movie, executives from Fox Searchlight eagerly cull reactions. Does the movie play? Do the pieces fit? But it’s hard to gauge the mood. Several audience members say they can’t even decide if they liked the film or not.

Claudia Lewis, a production executive who has been a staunch proponent of the film, is hopeful and nervous. “We are working on some original marketing ideas,” she says. She and her colleagues know that this movie is not an easy sell.

It’s not clear if Mr. Russell is picking up on the uncertainty in the air. A few days later, he sends a euphoric e-mail message about the screening. His words are rhapsodic and earnest; he seems to be channeling the same energy with which he directed the movie: “It was such a swell night. Such good vibes in the air. I especially liked those who said the film affected them like a trippy reality drug.”

In fact, for a moment, Mr. Russell seems as if he’s never left the set.

Originally published in the
New York Times,
September 19, 2004. Copyright © 2004 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

“Riveting tales of Hollywood hubris…. A fun read.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“Like all good reporting,
Rebels on the Backlot
ultimately opens up its subject for debate and leaves the final verdict to the reader…. Film directors’ careers are full of second and third acts. I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of any of these guys, and I’m grateful we’ll have Sharon Waxman on hand to fill us in.”

—Salon.com

“Enjoyably dishy.”

—
Variety

“Sharon Waxman is one of the finest showbiz reporters on earth….
[Rebels on the Backlot
] is an exhilarating explosion in the anecdote factory, a Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride through indie cinema, a scholarly document that can stand proudly on your bookshelf alongside Peter Biskind….
Rebels on the Backlot
works beautifully on several levels, starting with down-and-dirty gossip. But it’s not just gossip—
Rebels
adds up to a detailed study of how indie cinema really works.”

—Seattle Weekly

“A lively book with gossipy and readable stories about some obsessive guys who are as much rascals as rebels.”

—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Rebels on the Backlot
makes a case for creating a new film canon of the late 1990s Renaissance.”

—
Pittsburgh Tribune

“Terrific … wildly informative and readable about the plight of the biggest young talents in modern movies…. Waxman has done an unusually fine job of painting the portraits of those filmmakers whose works make film cognoscenti want to run, not walk, the minute they open. This is about as credible an up-to-the-minute view of how the most exciting current movies are being made that you’ll find between covers.”

—
Buffalo News

HARPER
PERENNIAL

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2005 by Harper-Entertainment, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

P.S.
^™
is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

REBELS ON THE BACKLOT.
Copyright © 2005 by Sharon Waxman.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03785-5

F
IRST
H
ARPER
P
ERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED
2006.

ISBN-10: 0-06-054018-4 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-054018-0 (pbk.)

06  07  08 09  10
/
RRD
10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1