Cher (33 page)

“Years ago, I went to see Mike about a movie,” recalls Cher of her encounter with director Mike Nichols. “He turned me down, and I told him, ‘You’re wrong. Someday you’re gonna be sorry, ’cause I’m really talented!’ Then, when Mike saw
Jimmy Dean
, he walked into the dressing room and said, ‘You’re right!’ It was so funny because of all the time that had passed” (13). Of their encounter in the Martin Beck Theater, she continued, “That night Mike came backstage with big tears in his eyes, and he said to me, ‘I want you to be in my new movie with Meryl Streep.’ I think at that moment I lost my hearing first, then my vision” (120).

The way that Nichols offered the role to her came with one major stipulation. She had to accept it on the spot without laying eyes on the script. “Of course I say, ‘Yes,’ ” she distinctly remembers.

This was so cute—Mike Nichols called before he sent me the script and said, “It’s a great part, but there’s one thing about her—she’s gay.” I said, “Oh, O.K.” It seems to me that an actress can play anything—a murderer, whatever—and what matters is doing a good job. The only time I worried was when I called my mother and said, “Mom, in this film I’m gay!” She said, “Oh, O.K.” Then, when Mom saw the movie, she phoned immediately. “Cher, you were wonderful, but I was so nervous, I was sweating! I thought you were going to be this dyke” (19).

I’ve always thought people are people, whatever their sexual preference, and I knew I didn’t want to play Dolly stomping around with a pack of Marlboros rolled up in my T-shirt sleeve, but I was all set to cut my hair short. Well, right away Mike said, “Let’s not make a statement about Dolly with a butch cut. It’ll be harder for you to bring her across, but let’s don’t help you with something obvious. Let’s have you work to get everything out of her without externals.” God, that was important! It let me say, “This is a
girl
, this is her way of life.” And I don’t think Dolly’s gayness is the thing you remember the most about her (19).

Silkwood
is the real-life story of Karen Silkwood and the events that led up to her sudden and mysterious death in 1974. Karen worked at the Kerr-McGee nuclear processing plant in Oklahoma. When she began organizing her fellow employees to demand union participation to question the safety of their working conditions, the events in her life began to take a tragic turn. It was clear in her mind that the “acceptable” levels of radiation
that the Kerr-McGee employees were being exposed to were in fact toxic, and she secretly traveled to Washington, D.C., to seek government intervention. It is generally suspected that the night her car was run off the road and she was killed, she was carrying documentation to prove her allegations of the safety cover-up to a reporter for the
New York Times
.

The role of Karen Silkwood was played by Meryl Streep, and her boyfriend Drew Stephens was portrayed by Kurt Russell. Cher played Dolly Pelliker, Karen and Drew’s lesbian roommate. The character of Dolly is based on the real-life Sherri Ellis. According to Ellis, “I sold the producers of the film the character portrayal rights, and for $67,500 they can defame my character any way they want.” When asked by reporters about her gay lifestyle, Ellis commented, “I don’t feel my personal life is anyone’s business” (121).

The real Drew Stephens served as an adviser on the film, and he met Cher on the set. Stephens reminded Cher that she had in fact met the real Karen Silkwood. Said Cher, “Drew told me he and Karen had come backstage after a Sonny & Cher concert. I didn’t know that. I knew the vaguest nothing about her life and death. It really made me scared when I started reading about it” (121).

Also in the cast of
Silkwood
was Sudie Bond, who had been one of the actresses in both the play and the film
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
. The supporting cast consisted of Diana Scarwid (
Mommy Dearest
), Fred Ward, and Ron Silver.

Of course, there were doubts about Cher’s ability to portray the part of Dolly Pelliker. Could the sequined Las Vegas–TV performer really play such a low-keyed role with warmth, understatement, and credibility? Nora Ephron, who wrote the film’s screenplay with Alice Arlen, admitted, “It was extremely high-risk casting. If it hadn’t worked, it would have been devastating to the movie. Before shooting, people would ask, ‘Who’s in the movie besides Meryl?’ We would say, ‘Cher,’ and they’d say, ‘You’re kidding?’ We went through that for months. We just told people, ‘Trust us’ ” (19).

Cher had her doubts as well. Poking fun at people’s perceptions of her talents, Cher commented to Joan Rivers on
The Tonight Show
that it was a wonder she wasn’t cast in a film opposite Pia Zadora instead of costarring with Meryl Streep.

When I was packing my bags to go to Texas for filming, I said to my sister, “I cannot go and work with Meryl Streep! I cannot!” But she was so open to me, and she had to be the one who was open, because I was so terrified. The first time I came on the set, she took me by the shoulders and gave me a kiss and said, “I’m so glad you’re here.” We got along so well, and it was strange for her because this is the first film she’s working on with another woman (111).

From her first day on the set, one of Cher’s biggest phobias came into play: her complexion and her use of makeup.

For a long time, I had
rotten
skin! [During]
The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour
[I had] an allergic reaction to wearing heavy pancake crap all day under hot lights. My skin looked so bad, this doctor gave me X-ray treatments, which turned my skin different colors, so I had acid peeling to correct that. Nothing worked, and during
Jimmy Dean
, when I broke out again, I called Polly Mellen at
Vogue
[magazine] and asked who in this town was best for skin. She sent me to Mario [Badescu] for cleaning, then I used his products, and in a month my skin started to look great (19).

Now, here she was in Texas, and the decree came down from Mike Nichols, “
No
makeup” whatsoever for Cher. “Let me tell you, it wasn’t my favorite look,” she proclaimed.

I tried sneaking a little base on, but Mike’d always be watching. Finally I said, “Fuck it, he knows what’s right.” The first day of the shoot, Kurt asked me, “What are you supposed to be?” and I ran in the bathroom and cried. I’d waited my whole life to be in movies and, O.K., Meryl’s no glamour queen either. This isn’t
French Lieutenant’s Woman
, but I looked like I worked in a stable. I am so convincingly ugly. It sure is easy to tear down an image (120).

According to Nora Ephron, Cher attempted to cheat and wear just a little makeup base, but everyone could see it, and Nichols put his foot down. “In one of the first shots in the movie, when she’s going down the hall, I can see the makeup. It looks a little greenish,” Ephron explains (121).

Cher finally relented and followed her enforced decree. “I’ll tell you exactly what I did,” she says.

I got up, showered, combed my hair straight down to let it dry that way so it was really nothing. Then I curled my eyelashes and put on a little base. I tried to get away with so many things and Mike always noticed it. There was nothing to hide behind in Dolly. There’s no flash. That’s exactly what was needed, so the public would see past “Cher” and accept me as an actress (121).

In the plot of the movie, Karen is in love with Drew, and Dolly is in love with Karen. When Drew walks out on Karen, Dolly tries halfheartedly to get Karen emotionally attached to her. There is one scene in which the two women sit on a porch swing and have a soul-searching talk about all of the things that are going wrong in their lives. The scene is one of the film’s strongest segments, and we see the characters of Karen and Dolly stripped bare of any pretense. Cher’s emotional acting in that particular scene is one of the reasons for the critical praise that was bestowed upon her after the film’s release.

In another scene, Dolly accuses Karen of taking about as good care of her estranged children from a previous marriage as she did of Drew. Cher recalls of filming that sequence, “That was a rough day. There were long breaks, we wouldn’t stay ‘in character.’ I’d do needlepoint, she’d do [knit] this green sweater and we’d listen to Michael McDonald records, or joke with Kurt. But that day we didn’t talk to each other or anyone else. We just sat alone. Mike didn’t talk to us either. At the end of the day I had a stomachache and Meryl had a headache” (121).

The filming of
Silkwood
took place between September and November of 1982. It had been quite a busy year for Cher. She had starred on Broadway, made two dramatic films, and stretched herself into a new realm of credibility. Would the public finally begin to think of her as something besides the other half of Sonny & Cher? This was certainly the start of Cher’s coming into her own as an actress and an individual.

According to her, she felt like she was the production’s cheerleader. “I was like the child, I was the darling girl. If any parts of it were funny, or could relieve tension, they were my parts, and so everyone was happy when I was around. And I didn’t have to wear make-up or care if I looked great” (119).

Cher recounted in her book
The First Time
that a few weeks before
Silkwood
was due to open in theaters she received a phone call from Mike Nichols. He told her that the preview “trailer” for the film was running in a theater in Westwood, California, preceding a Tom Cruise film. He told her to go and see it, that it was very good. Cher went to the theater with her sister, and her manager. When the trailer came up on the screen, Meryl Streep’s name flashed on the screen, and the crowd let out an “Ahhhh.” Then Kurt Russell’s name came up on the screen, and the audience said, “Ohhhh.” Then Cher’s name came up on the screen and the audience started laughing. Cher’s sister Georganne started to cry. Her manager started to cry. And Cher was crushed.

According to her, when the film opened, she witnessed the same reaction. “When my name came on the screen everyone laughed. I was
devastated, and yet I couldn’t really get angry, because it was such an organic response. Everyone had that kind of reaction. It was painful beyond belief but it was interesting, because at the end when my name came up everyone clapped. This is an upward climb, this is an uphill battle” (119).

Sonny Bono, on the other hand, was having similar credibility problems. In the public’s eyes, for the longest time, he would always be “Cher’s ex-partner.” On New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1981, at a candlelight ceremony in Aspen, Colorado, after six and a half years of living together, Sonny married Susie Coelho. Embarrassingly enough, when Reverend Gregg Anderson performed the ceremony, he screwed up the couple’s names by announcing, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to unite Sonny and Cher-ie!” Susie blurted out, “Who’s Cherie?” but the damage was already done. Was she destined to always live in the shadow of Cher? Apparently so, and it was more than she could take. Her marriage to Sonny dissolved in less than three years.

On the subject of the public’s opinion of her talents, Cher was quick to respond defiantly.

People’s perceptions of me are so limited. Do you think that when I was doing my Las Vegas act I was less or more a person than when I was doing
Silkwood?
I’m a worker. I work through the media available to me at the time. It was so painful to be constantly devaluated on the basis of external surroundings. You know what it is? I dress strangely. Many people don’t understand about that, but it’s something I like. I’m certainly not going to change (13).

In the middle of her stretching out as a film actress, Cher released her next album,
I Paralyze
. It was her hope that it would inject her right into the middle of the rock world, but it failed to make the charts. One of the best cuts on the album was the song “Walk with Me,” which was very reminiscent of the songs that made Cher mentor Phil Spector famous. In the summer of 1981, Cher had stated,

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time finding the right label, and the right producer for my next album. I believe I have found him, though. I needed to find a producer who was consistent, album after album. Then I thought, “I really love what John Farrar does with Livvy [Olivia Newton-John], and I adore all of Livvy’s albums.” So somebody said, “Yeah, but he doesn’t record anybody but Olivia.” So I got him to come over, we talked, and it’s set now. I’m looking forward to seeing what John wants to do. What John is going to write is going to be how he sees me; he’s going to do his interpretation of “Cher,” and that should be
very
interesting (20).

When the album was released in 1982, the only song that Farrar produced was the title cut, “I Paralyze,” which failed to become the hit single that Cher had longed for. The rest of the album ended up being produced by David Wolfert. The album received almost no publicity and subsequently sold very few copies.
C’est la vie!
By the time
I Paralyze
was released, Cher was too busy with her new acting career to promote it, and the LP, which was her strongest and most consistent solo album in years, died on the vine.

When the film version of
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
was released in late 1982, all of a sudden moviegoers were getting their first taste of Cher the movie star, and they were quite impressed. In fact, Cher was seriously mentioned as a contender for an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Sissy.

The studio that produced
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
was actively campaigning to net her a nomination, along with Sandy Dennis. The major question was should she be considered for the “Best Actress” category, or for the “Best Supporting Actress” category?