Watch Me: A Memoir (15 page)

When I got back to Los Angeles, I sought out David Craig, who was known for teaching actors how to sing—people like Cicely Tyson, Raquel Welch, and Lucille Ball. There were interesting people in the class, like Melanie Griffith and Candy Bergen’s mother, Frances. Some of the people there had been singing for years and just liked going to the class so they could practice. The first song David Craig gave me to sing was “Where or When,” and I spent close to the entire three-month term trying to get through it without leaving the stage in tears. For a long time I found it difficult to sing in public. My voice reminded me of my mother’s when she used to sing to me when I was a child back in Ireland. I would tearfully run across Hollywood Boulevard to Musso and Frank’s after class and drink whiskey sours with my friend Ray Underwood, just to recover. It was awful. When I finally got through the song, the room exploded, everyone was so relieved. It was a full-on triumph. David said, “Now you don’t ever need to come back,” and I never did.

*  *  *

The Ice Pirates
was essentially a B movie that John Foreman, who had become my champion, was producing at MGM. I was playing the part of Maida, the greatest swordswoman in the universe; Robert Urich and Mary Crosby were starring. My love interest in the movie was an Oakland Raiders defensive lineman, football great John Matuszak, “the Tooz,” a sweet man with the frame of a gorilla. In one scene he allowed me to climb onto his shoulders; it was like scaling an oak tree. I liked creating Maida’s wardrobe—leather armor, tights, thigh-high stiletto-heeled boots—and wearing long braids with the skulls of small monkeys and rodents attached like lucky charms. All through filming, the Tooz was mild-mannered and easy to work with. Apart from one instance when I walked into a camera shutter and gashed my eyelid, the shoot was calm.

On the last day of work, the Tooz asked if I’d like to go to his dressing room to say goodbye before leaving set. When I knocked on his door, he filled the space as it swung open and I walked inside. Without much ado, he pulled off an oversized cowboy boot and produced from it a handgun, followed by a big white bag of cocaine, which he proceeded to overturn onto a Formica table. The firearm and the sheer amount of the drug were unnerving. When he proffered a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill, I murmured an excuse about having to drive home and left as soon as I could politely get out the door.

Later that week, Greta reported on going to a heavyweight fight in Vegas with Bert and Jack and, incidentally, the Tooz. They were aboard an MGM Grand Air charter plane, and during takeoff, the Tooz mixed all the miniature bottles of
Stolichnaya at hand with a carton of orange juice into a jumbo plastic container, the kind old ladies cradled on their laps in front of the slot machines. Everyone on the plane was sharing this concoction. A few years later, John Matuszak died at the age of thirty-eight of a prescription-drug overdose.

CHAPTER 15

I
t was during
Ice Pirates
that John Foreman gave me a book by Richard Condon called
Prizzi’s Honor.
He said, “Read this and let me know what you think of it.”

I read it overnight. It was a wonderful book, a Mob story full of wit and black humor. I went back to him the next day and said, “It’s great.”

“What do you think about playing Maerose Prizzi?” he asked.

I said, “What a great idea. Fantastic!”

He said, “Yeah. What do you think about Jack as the hit man, Charley Partanna, and your dad to direct?”

And I thought, “Oh, damn!” because I knew I was going to be sandwiched between these two big rocks.

When
The Ice Pirates
came to a close, I got a call from Foreman saying, “We’ve got to get Jack down to Vallarta to see your dad. Your dad can’t come up here, he’s too sick. You’ve gotta get Jack to go there.”

I said, “I’ll get Jack to go, but I’m not going there with him.”

And he said, “You have to.”

I said, “I’m scared of flying, and anyway, I know what’s going to happen. Inevitably, I’m going to get down there and hear everyone’s problems, because there are always problems connected to work. I’m going to hear Dad’s problems about
Jack, Jack’s problems about Dad. And I’m going to be on an island in the middle of nowhere, with no way out. With the sea in front and the jungle behind. Forget it.”

Somehow I managed to get Jack to go. I said, “Dad is sick. This could be it. Who knows if he’s even well enough to make this movie? He adores you. Please do this.” Jack sweetly complied and went down to Puerto Vallarta. Of course, there was no telephone; it was all CB radio down there, and Foreman couldn’t get a beep out of Jalisco. On the third day or so, he was starting to get a little consternated. So he called me up and said, “Okay. We’re leaving for the airport at six
A.M.
tomorrow.”

I replied, “No we’re not.”

John said, “Yes we are. I’m gonna come to your house and pick you up at six. We’re going down to Puerto Vallarta.”

And I said, “No. I’m not going.”

Next morning at 6
A.M.
, my doorbell rang. I opened the door in my nightdress. There was John Foreman. He said, “You’re not ready. Get ready.” To which I replied, “No. I told you. I’m not gonna be in the middle of this.” John spun on his heel, furious, and off he went down my hill and took the trip to Mexico. By chance, upon arrival in Puerto Vallarta, he saw Jack buying huaraches at the airport. Jack was on his way back to L.A. They’d had the most fabulous time, he and Dad. They had watched female Olympic gymnasts on the satellite feed. Jack hadn’t hitherto understood that
Prizzi’s Honor
was a comedy. He’d read it as a serious piece. Jack had missed the point until Dad suggested that perhaps he wear a toupee as the main character, which Jack confided he had no intention of doing. But now that he understood, now that my father had explained it to him, it was all hands on deck. And that was the inception of
Prizzi’s Honor.

*  *  *

It seemed that no talent agency wanted to take me on prior to
Prizzi’s Honor.
Most didn’t even bother to return my phone calls. Eventually, I joined the Yvette Bikoff Agency. It was a small agency, but Yvette seemed to have more confidence in me than the others. Feeling that I had been instrumental in bringing together the main elements for the film, with Jack and Dad signing on for
Prizzi’s Honor
, I suggested that Yvette might make an attempt to raise my asking price above scale. “I’ve tried,” Yvette replied. “They refuse to even discuss it.”

“Why don’t you call the production guy now and just ask once more?” I pressed her. As I was standing there, she put the phone on speaker and dialed the number.

An irritated voice came on the line. “You want more money for Anjelica Huston? You must be kidding . . . go ahead, ask me!” said the voice. “We’d like nothing better than to see her dropped from the film. She has no talent. Her boyfriend is the star and her father is the director, that’s the only reason we are even having this conversation.”

Standing in Yvette’s office, listening to this man rant on, made my eyes prickle and my heart beat with indignation. But I also vowed silently that when the movie came out, he would eat his words.

*  *  *

We were in New York, about to start
Prizzi’s Honor.
I went to visit Joan Buck, who lent me one of her mother’s couture dresses and jewelry from the fifties for the part. We were working in a rehearsal space somewhere in midtown. Costume and hair tests were also going on in the building. I was introduced to a hairdresser with a wild Afro called Anthony Cortino, who took me to a wigmaker for a waist-length
fall, and to a tall man with a touchy demeanor, the costume designer Donfeld. He actually spelled his name all in one word. I thought that was very fifties, and he must have sniffed out my disdain. When I suggested that the taffeta sash on the vintage dress I was trying on for him should perhaps be Schiaparelli pink, he said, “I totally disagree,” shaking his head and flinging his arms in the air. Minutes later, when we showed the dress to Dad, he looked me over for a few silent moments. “What if the sash were Schiaparelli pink?” he asked. Donfeld looked shocked. I laughed hard on that one. When Dad and I were in sync, we thought alike.

Dad’s theory was that if you were looking to cast a character, you’d better go straight to the source, even if the person wasn’t necessarily an actor. It was thus that Dad’s secretary from years past, longer ago yet than Gladys Hill, came to act the part of Aunt Amalia in
Prizzi’s Honor.
Her name was Annie Selepegno. She was a sweet woman and no doubt physically perfect for the part, but very stiff, and not gifted in the least as an actress. She had agreed to do the role because in spite of her eighty-plus years, she had something of a gambling addiction and needed to pay some outstanding bills. In the wings stood Julie Bovasso, a great New York stage actress, but Dad had refused to give her the part.

A few days into preproduction, Dad had the cast come in for a table reading after wardrobe fittings. He listened with his eyes closed as we went through the script. I wondered at one point if he was taking a nap, but this was not the case, since he got up abruptly and left the room as soon as we finished. I could sense that something was troubling him.

Two days later, he called Jack and me to request that the three of us assemble in Jack’s suite at the Carlyle. As the sun
fell and the shadows grew long over Central Park, Dad put an arm around each of us and drew us close to gaze out the window across the tree line. “Look at that,” he said. “Quite something, isn’t it?” We agreed that it was. Then, with a note of triumph, like a little boy with a lizard in his pocket, he said, “I’ve got it!” He produced a tape recorder. “Listen to this,” he said, pushing the play button. “It’s the voice of the movie!” Julie Bovasso’s Brooklyn accent was to be our guideline. I took to frequenting churches in Brooklyn, while Jack visited the gaming parlors.

Laila Nabulsi had split from Hunter Thompson and was living at Judy Belushi’s apartment in New York when she met John Foreman and became his assistant on
Prizzi’s.
Boaty Boatwright, a senior agent at ICM and a longtime friend of my family, introduced them. Foreman ordered that his assistants have breakfast together each morning and proceed to set, to be there before anyone else arrived. When Dad walked on set, everyone stood up. Foreman ran a tight ship, and everyone knew it was worth it. He was a fantastic producer and wonderfully loyal to Dad.

Jack and I had met Tommy Baratta in Aspen, and now we were all frequenting his restaurant in the Village, Marylou’s, hanging out, eating pasta, and practicing our Brooklyn accents. Tommy Baratta had a great way with food and became Jack’s personal chef. There were always incredible smells emanating from Jack’s trailer and enveloping everything in a haze of tomato and garlic and olives and New Jersey peppers. Generally, we would have lunch in or around Jack’s trailer—since Tommy had now basically sacrificed his restaurant in order to cook for Jack—and the counters and cooking surfaces were covered with olive oil, salamis, and cheeses.

Laila knocked on Jack’s door one morning to tell him they were ready on the set. Indira Gandhi had been shot that day in India, and Laila asked Jack if he had heard the news. Jack looked out the window. He was in full character as Charley Partanna. “Broads!” was all he said.

My part, Maerose, had all the good elements working for it. She was the exiled daughter of the Prizzi family, who would do literally anything to recapture the heart of its top consigliere, Charley Partanna. The character was an outsider, complex and layered, a dark horse who knew exactly what she wanted and how to go after it. I made off-work dates with individual members of the
Prizzi’s
cast to get a feeling about who they were and what their standing might be in the setup.

Robert Loggia played my uncle Eduardo, the Prizzis’ lawyer. He was by birth a blond Sicilian. He observed, “One of the reasons you might want to talk low and out the corner of your mouth is so that people can’t see what you are saying—in Brooklyn as in Sicily, not everyone needs to know your business.” That piece of advice gave me good insight into the nature of Maerose Prizzi.

Bill Hickey played the don. He was extraordinary. He had worked in
Wise Blood
and was a favorite actor of Dad’s. They had a shorthand. “How do you want me to do this, John?” Bill asked Dad about the part of the don.

“Like a reptile,” Dad answered.

Bill taught an acting class that I audited when I was in New York. He would sit motionless in his chair, a perpetual cigarette hanging from his lips, dripping ashes on his shirtfront, eyelids at half-mast, offering the occasional slice of dry wit or a cackle of irony. Every day he came to set with a flask of coffee that looked like squid ink when he poured it, a sandwich
in recycled tinfoil, and an enormous bad-tempered English sheepdog with dreadlocks and bad breath.

I soon developed a deep affection for my hairdresser, Anthony, whom I nicknamed “Mittoine.” He was a wonderful, gentle, sweet, funny man. We used to laugh like hyenas together. Mittoine was gay, and mad about Barbra Streisand. But he was also devoted to me and went along with all my opinions, even if they were way off the mark. Once in a while, just for the hell of it, I would criticize Streisand. Any word against her was akin to treason, and it caused him a terrible riot of emotion to have to tolerate my comments about the goddess he idolized. Sometimes, if I was on set but not working in a scene, we would fool around with John Foreman and Laila while the camera was rolling, just to see whom we could make laugh out loud by tickling each other or stepping on each other’s feet. I know of no other producers who would risk losing a take because of such silly behavior, but John Foreman instigated it, and what a joy it was to feel such liberty—he was setting me free, and we both knew it.

There was also a friend from the Halston days backstage—Bruce Weintraub, who was working in the art department as the set decorator. We had an excellent, handsome Polish director of photography, Andrzej Bartkowiak, who really knew how to light an actress. For one particular moment in the film, when Maerose dresses in black and paints herself up to look like an old spinster, Andrzej said to me, “Do you want to look bad-bad in this scene or good-bad?” Even the scenes where Maerose looked rough had a certain glamour. I looked forward to every day on set. The atmosphere was conspiratorial. Foreman had handpicked the crew, from Meta Wilde, who had been Dad’s script girl on
Maltese Falcon
, to
Rudi Fehr, his editor from
Key Largo.
Rudi was now working with his daughter, Kaja, in the cutting room. It was a great cast of characters.