Watch Me: A Memoir (29 page)

Knowing the difficulties and drawbacks—apart from the obvious one of being a woman—such as finding and seeking out the financing for a project, I had not put much effort into the idea other than to tell Toni Howard that I wanted to direct one day. Nothing ever came of it until one weekend in the fall of 1995, when Toni told me that she had an interesting prospect for me, a movie for Turner Network Television based on an autobiographical novel by Dorothy Allison called
Bastard Out of Carolina.
The director had dropped out, and they needed an immediate replacement. Was I interested in directing the film? They would need an answer by Monday.

That night I read the script with mounting excitement, and the next day I pored over the book in its entirety. It was undoubtedly one of the most moving and profoundly upsetting stories I had ever read—about a young girl called Bone, growing up in South Carolina, who is raped by her stepfather with her mother’s consent. The problem, I thought, would be
finding a girl of the right age who could convey the anguishing fear and the dilemma of a ten-year-old child trapped in a vicious cycle of abuse. What child, I wondered, could possibly take on this role? And how would one explain it to her?

The personal thrill of being selected for this assignment obliterated any fear I might have entertained as a neophyte. Because the material was so good, with a solid beginning, middle, and end, I had confidence and did not contemplate what the response might be to my decision to direct, or any unfortunate comparisons with my father.

The film’s producer, Gary Hoffman, and I set about making some changes with the scriptwriter, Anne Meredith. Jennifer Jason Leigh, one of my favorite actresses, was already attached to play the part of Bone’s mother, and we were to have a week’s casting session before leaving for Wilmington, North Carolina, to do a location scout.

On the first day of auditions, a small, slender, pale girl with straight brown hair came into the office. She was wearing a blue flower-printed thin summer dress with puff sleeves that was a size too small; her legs were bare, and she had knowing green eyes and a beautiful, sad, lopsided smile. Her audition was amazing. I couldn’t believe that finding Bone could be this easy. Just to be sure, I went on looking at other girls, but no one fit the part like Jena Malone. At the time I met her, she had been living in Lake Tahoe with her mother, who was working in regional theater. Jena told me that she had gotten used to being onstage as a toddler and singing show tunes with her mother.

Soon Gary and I were scouting locations with the cinematographer. I had called Nic Roeg and asked whom he might recommend. “Tony Richmond will take care of you,”
he said. Gary hired Tony’s wife, Amanda DiGiulio, as our production manager.

When we began to scout for the movie in rural North Carolina, I was appalled by the poverty, the derelict conditions, and the evidence of meth and alcohol abuse in the area. When we pulled over to the side of the road to inspect a house as a possible location, small children would appear with hands outstretched, begging for soda and cookies. In one woman’s home, the tangle of discarded clothes, newspapers, and garbage belied the message of the poster above the bed, depicting an egg frying in a pan with the slogan
THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGS
, written in bold type above the image.

This was a country of endless fields and wet timberland, with great distances between dwellings. Broken-down cars and bits of discarded machinery stood on cinder blocks or just rusted out by the side of the road. In the kitchen of a house we eventually used in the film, a whole side of beef was marked “not for sale” on the fat in blue ink. It was covered in flies. In the hall, panty hose hung from a light fixture. A suture held the red living room curtains closed against the light of day as FOX News droned in a continuous loop on a battered TV. Cockroaches climbed the walls, and out back the owner had created a pyramid twelve feet high of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans. The general lack of pride or initiative was astonishing, but I understood for the first time how a life can amount to a hill of beans, without a faint glimmer of hope or investment in the future. Just isolation and moonshine and the shadow of abuse.

Soon the cast was assembled. Finding the actor to play the part of Bone’s stepfather, Daddy Glen, proved more of a challenge for me than casting the women. I wanted his sickness
to come from a real place that the audience could identify with. I didn’t want to cast him as an evil man, more like an out-of-control baby. And Ron Eldard, a fine actor, understood this perfectly. Pat Hingle was set to play Ron’s father. Diana Scarwid, whom I had loved ever since
Mommy Dearest
, Glenne Headly, and Susan Traylor—the daughter of my acting teacher Peggy Feury—were cast as Bone’s aunts. I found a lovely four-year-old local, Lindley Mayer, to play Reece, Bone’s little sister. It was an outstanding group that also included Michael Rooker and Lyle Lovett as Bone’s uncles, Grace Zabriskie as the grandmother, Dermot Mulroney as Bone’s beloved first stepfather, who dies in a car crash, and Christina Ricci as a visiting cousin who gives Bone a taste of freedom. Laura Dern would later narrate the film.

Many of the crew had worked with me before, such as Van Ramsey and Julie Hewett, who did key makeup. Tony Richmond was everything Nic had promised and looked after me beautifully. The optimistic and resourceful Nelson Coates was our production designer, and Van Dyke Parks came on to do the music. Éva Gárdos wrote me an irresistible letter and became my editor.

On the first day of filming, in Wilmington, I arrived early on set and ordered bacon and eggs in my trailer. Then I sat and waited for my call. No one came. Eventually, I thought maybe I should just go to set and see what was going on. When I made my way down there, the first assistant director, Mary Ellen Woods, looked at her watch and then at me with raised eyebrows.

“I’m late?” I gasped. “No one told me.”

She took me to one side and explained that only actors get summoned to set; the director should be among the first
to show up. I was terribly embarrassed, but it broke the ice. Now everyone knew what a novice I was, and it would never happen again. Every day I learned more. Given that my father was a prolific film director and I had worked for more than twenty years as an actress in movies, it was shaming that I didn’t know more about the technicalities of making a film. So I survived on instinct and by surrounding myself with great people from whom I could learn.

Mary Ellen Woods was very protective and helped me save face a few times. When it came time to film the rape scenes, Ron Eldard, Jena, Tony Richmond, and I were prepared. I had put Jena and Ron together with a stuntman weeks earlier, so all the action was carefully choreographed. I didn’t want Jena to have a moment’s uncertainty about her safety, and I needed her and Ron to become accustomed to physical behavior. By taking this approach, the action became as syncopated as a dance. The image of Jena as she went about her task was amazing to all of us. She was extraordinarily gifted and a dream to work with. I can’t recall ever having to tell her what to do. She was a natural, with an innate understanding of what was required.

The filming played out over twenty-eight days. Each evening the dailies would go to the network, and although Gary was playing it close to the vest with me, from what I understood, everyone at Turner Network Television was delighted with the footage.

When I came back to Los Angeles from Wilmington in January 1996, Éva Gárdos and I worked on the cut for about a month. We were shaping it to come in at exactly the time allotted, to the minute. I had found some original Baptist music that I liked, by Ronnie Dodd and Ruby Vass, along
with tunes from Lefty Frizzell, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Kitty Wells, and Blind Willie Johnson. When we gave our final cut to TNT, we felt proud of our accomplishment.

*  *  *

A few days later, I was asked to come to the Turner offices for a meeting with Scott Sassa, Ted Turner’s top executive. “It’s a wonderful film,” he said shortly after our introduction. “But there are two problems—the masturbation and rape scenes.”

I looked at him in shock. “But that’s what the film is about,” I said.

“Nevertheless, the scenes have to go,” he said. “We can’t put that on the air.”

“Has Mr. Turner seen the film?” I asked.

“He doesn’t generally do that, but if that is what you would like, I guess I can ask him to look at it.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I answered, nose in the air.

Later that week, I got a call from Scott Sassa. “Well,” he said, “they actually watched it, Mr. Turner and Miss Fonda, they watched it together.”

Ted Turner was dating Jane Fonda. I felt sure she would weigh in on my side. “And?” I said proudly, knowing that I had won the round. “What did they say?”

“They didn’t say anything. They screamed.”

“What do you mean?” I gasped. “They didn’t like it?”

“Mr. Turner said it will never show on his network.”

I went directly to bed, which, as I said earlier, is generally my way of dealing with things when the world gets too complicated. That night Bob and I were hosting a party for an art event at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and he offered to call our friend Wendy Stark to fill in for me, which she kindly agreed to do. I stayed upstairs that evening, listening to the
chatter rise from below. At one point, I peered over the balcony; the courtyard was a sea of people. It actually felt kind of great, hiding at one’s own party. Bob came up to check on me a few times and brought me some of Dora’s
pupusas
.

*  *  *

One of the great things about Bob was that he understood the nature of artistic crisis. He never bullied me when I was in a fix but always allowed me to work out my problems in my own way, even if it was not to his advantage, such as my not behaving like a perfect wife and hostess.

The following morning as we were sitting at the breakfast table, the phone rang. A voice with a French accent came on. “Monsieur Gilles Jacob, the president of the Cannes festival, would like to speak to Miss Huston.”

There was a pause as Mr. Jacob came on the line. “I would like to show your film at Cannes,” he said. From zero to one hundred miles per hour in just a moment—my luck had changed.

In May, I presented the movie in the Un Certain Regard selection at the Debussy Theater in Cannes. The enthusiastic response to the film was a moment of triumph for me personally. Subsequently, Jerry Offsay, the president of the cable company Showtime, bought the film and aired my cut without asking for any changes. There were some offers to buy the film for foreign distribution, but Turner refused them all. I guess he closed the movie down after he’d gotten the return on his investment.

In December 1996, it was my honor to be nominated by the Directors Guild for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Specials, and also nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie, or
Dramatic Special for
Bastard Out of Carolina.
Making movies is a bittersweet business.

*  *  *

Joan Buck had been working since 1994 in Paris as the editor of French
Vogue.
I had seen her parents, Jules and Joyce, whenever Joan had come to Los Angeles to visit them and to stay with me. They were living in reduced circumstances in an apartment overlooking some big dark pines on the edge of a golf course in Santa Monica. It was as though all the stuffing had gone out of their lives, and suddenly here they were in post shock, with the memories of their former existence still embodied in a few good pieces of salvaged furniture and fine china from their heyday in London, where they had lived the high life in the sixties. They gave me a mahogany makeup box that had belonged to the actor Edmund Kean. I treasure it to this day. Joyce was working at Pratesi in Beverly Hills, selling linens. Jules was speaking of old times like a reel-to-reel tape that you couldn’t turn off. He had been the cameraman on several of Dad’s documentaries about the war, and all of his stories centered on that subject.

One day I got a call from Joan. “I’m coming to L.A.,” she said. “Mom’s sick.”

Joyce had lung and liver cancer, and it had spread to the brain. Things went very fast from there. When we went to visit Joyce at St. John’s hospital on my birthday, she was sitting up in bed. A nurse came in to offer her lunch. “I think you should have caviar,” I said.

I ran to the car and drove to Santa Monica Seafood, where I picked up a tin of beluga, a little mother-of-pearl spoon, and a split of Dom Pérignon. When I got back to the hospital, Joyce ate the caviar and sipped her champagne. We had no
idea this would be Joyce’s last meal, but a couple of days later she slipped into a coma and never reawakened. Joyce passed away on July 13, 1996. Joan spoke wrenchingly of her love for Joyce at the Little Chapel of the Dawn in Santa Monica. When Joan returned to Paris, she took Jules with her.

*  *  *

I was now in my mid-forties, and this was my last chance to consider motherhood. Bob and I talked often about having a baby—whether we should try implanting and what, if any, our chances might be. Maybe a child could be part of our new adventure together. The doctors recommended surgery to remove scar tissue, and I had a second laparoscopy, followed by a hysteroscopy a year later, followed by in vitro fertilization some months after that. It was something of an ordeal. I felt like a human pincushion, giving myself shots of progesterone and Premarin several times a day, as well as going to Alhambra for fertility acupuncture with a Dr. Peng. I remember praying that the outcome would be positive. Bob and I made the attempt to implant several times, but it had not worked. I felt like an animal experiment; the whole process was a trial and felt unnatural.

The last time I underwent in vitro, at St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, it was with several of my own fertilized eggs. The doctors recommended that I lie on my back for a week following the procedure. Everything felt good until day five, when I felt a change and knew instinctively that the effort had failed. I believed that it was not meant to be, and decided that I was not going to try again.